I was fairly surprised to see the shaman come to the lions' den the next day.I was lying outside the den as I watched her go in. I'm sure she noticed me. She had to have. I was lying right there. But she didn't even glance at me as she marched right into the den.
"Sire," I heard her say.
"Yes? Oh, Vessa, hello. I assume this is about Shujaa?" That was the king talking. He was the only one inside. Everyone else was conveniently gone. If the king said he wanted privacy, he'd get it. I gave a derisive hmph of laughter as I heard his comment. They'd undoubtedly be "deciding my future."
"Yes. I don't want to have him as a—patient."
"Why not?"
"I don't think he'd be that responsive to what I could do."
"You haven't tried anything yet. Believe me, Vessa, this is the last option. I've tried everything to try to get Shujaa to leave Ushairi alone. Nothing's worked."
"Sire, I heal wounds. Physical things. I don't heal minds."
"Have you ever tried?"
"No. And that's exactly why I don't think this will work. I think that I'm not going to have any impact at all on Shujaa. If anything, I'll make it worse. He has a horribly amplified superiority complex, an obsession with death, a lust to make his chosen victim die over and over again—and he thinks that it isn't wrong at all to feel like he does.
"
"He should have been punished long ago. If it weren't for my son, he would have been."
"So punish him, sire. Don't put him through this."
"Isn't the saying 'The first step to overcoming you have a problem is admitting you have one'? Make him admit that he has a problem with killing."
"Sire, it doesn't work that way. For Shujaa, it's not just admitting there's a problem. He has to know that the problem even exists. He sees no reason why he shouldn't be allowed to molest Ushairi. He doesn't feel guilty at all about it."
"Then make him feel guilty. Please, Vessa, just find some way to stop this—madness. I don't want to have to resort to other options."
"Sire, I can't guarantee anything. I'm trying to be honest."
"I want you to do what you can," said King Janja. "Anything to help. I mean it, Vessa."
"Fine," said the shaman. I could hear a bite in her voice. "Send him by in a couple of days. I'm busy now."
"In two days."
The shaman marched out of the den, not even waiting to be excused. I smiled slightly at that. I don't quite know why. All I could tell was that she wasn't completely pleased with the way the meeting had gone. I closed my eyes and decided to take a nap.
oOo
A couple of days later King Janja asked me to go back. He made it perfectly clear that his threat still stood until I was cured. He didn't come right out and say it; it was "until the shaman thinks you've improved enough." I could almost imagine the little gleam of amusement in his eyes as he said it. I was beginning to realize where some of Aushi's idiot genes came from.
I dragged myself over to the shaman's the next day. She was inside, alone, lying on the floor. Apparently "Mala" hadn't come back, but he had bothered to restock what supplies of herbs she had that were dwindling. The pile of what she said was d'ron was bigger than it was last time, at least, along with several other piles.
"Let's get some rules straight," she said as I came in and sat down sullenly. "You do what I say. You don't do anything to this den or anything in it without permission. And you most certainly aren't going to be here when you're not supposed to be."
So she was going to act the tough girl. "You could just say I'm fine and let me go."
She chuckled bitterly. "And get you sent right back when you haven't changed a bit? I don't want to do this. It's one of the last things on my list. But you're here, and you're going to leave this place for good only when you're socially acceptable by my standard."
"Alright," I said, "cure me. Give me the herb or whatever and send me on my way." I lied down, irritated and not afraid to show it.
"It's not that easy. We're going to have to talk."
"About what?"
"I don't know." She sighed, obviously frustrated. "I've thought for two days, and I don't know. I don't know enough about you."
"Then what do you expect me to do?"
She shook her head, thinking hard. "Just—just stay here."
"How long?"
"As long as it takes. Neither of us are going to like it."
"Fine," I grumbled. I didn't have any other choice. I laid my head down moodily. Neither of us said another word that day. We were left alone. Near sundown, I finally got up and left, hearing her say the first words since we spoke earlier.
"One last rule: Stay away from Ushairi." I turned around and snarled at her. She glared back at me. "You're going to stay away from her," she said coldly.
"Like hell," I growled, walking out of the den. She couldn't control me. None of them could.
oOo
"How do you feel?" King Janja asked as I walked into the den.
I scowled at him.
"Ah," he said, realizing that I obviously wasn't up to his expectations yet.
"You're the one always preaching patience, sire. Use some." I moodily walked over to my corner of the den and curled up.
oOo
A few more days went by, me going back to the shaman's den every day. Then a few more went by, and, just for the heck of it, a few more did, too. Nothing happened, really. The only thing that began to change was some of my knowledge.
In addition to knowing ways to kill Ushairi, I began to find some ways to heal her, too. The shaman was determined not to let this be a total waste of time, and I wasn't too keen about that, either. So she would list off some of the herbs that she had around her den in those neat little piles, and would tell me what they did, me listening halfheartedly. I made it as plain as I could that I did not want to be there. Still, I learned just about everything she taught. A few things might have slipped by, but my memory is pretty good overall.
The biggest trouble that we ran into was her trying to give me orders. That monkey Mala never showed up anymore and she had to tie all of the vines to animals' legs by herself. It was a pretty tricky thing, from what I could see, but she did it pretty well. It was on the bigger wounds that she needed help. My help. I didn't want to help, but she made me anyway. Dirty, blackmailing so-and-so.
But the worst day was when a little fire broke out. She saw the first two injured animals. There were three leopards, one limping, the other on the back of an uninjured leopard. Vessa gasped. "Where's the fire?"
"Over toward the southeast part of the kingdom. Can't miss it," said the walking one.
Then, stupidly, she turned to me and said, "I need you to go and get as many as you can out of there."
I blinked. "Excuse me?"
"Come on, time's running out. Get going!"
"Why would I want to do that?"
The shaman stared at me in disbelief. "Excuse me?" It wasn't the first time I had received that who-do-you-think-you-are look from her.
"I could get hurt."
She remained shocked for maybe two more seconds before her gaze turned to stone and she said coldly, "Get out there, help those animals back here, and do it now, or else you won't be alive tomorrow."
"Do what you want. I'm not running into some fire to help a bunch of animals I don't even know."
"They'd do the same for you!" she protested.
"Maybe."
"Damn it, it's the decent thing!" she yelled.
"I'm not going." I lied down even further to prove my point. She groaned and turned to the two wounded. She grabbed some r'laka and began to press it down on wounds on the more badly burned animal. A few moments later she got some selv and started pressing down on that. All the while she kept shooting me dirty looks. The uninjured leopard left and headed back toward the fire.
I felt a little bad from the way she kept looking at me, and the annoyance of her glares making it only worse. I got up and stalked out of the den and ran toward the fire, cursing under my breath. When I finally got there, I could see that it wasn't that big of a fire. It'd just leave a burnt spot in the savannah for a while. The animals that lived there wouldn't want to ever go back there, probably.
I ran up through an opening in the flames and saw a couple of cheetahs. Both had burns on them, but neither seemed to quite notice. They looked at me wildly and asked, "Have you seen Sisha?"
"I don't know any Sisha," I yelled over the roaring fire.
"Gods, she's going to die!" the female yelled. "Sisha! Sisha!"
I decided it had to be their cub. I went through the fire and began looking, making sure I stayed out of harm's way. I had no intention to get hurt today. As I went further in, that became harder and harder. Flames seemed to be everywhere. The heat was unbearable. I cursed the shaman, and reminded myself to make sure I repeated what I was saying now when I got back.
I suddenly heard a scream, and moments later, a continual, piteous cry for "Help." I headed toward it. There were two cheetah cubs stuck in a tree, a boy and a girl. I could see what had scared them; the branch they were on had snapped partially under their weight. It wouldn't take much more for it to collapse.
"Hey!" I yelled. Both of them looked at me. "You two! Jump!"
"We can't!" yelled the girl. "We can't jump! If we jump—"
"Shut your little yap and jump, damn it!"
The boy jumped. It was an instant too late before I realized that he was jumping for me, and he hit me right in the face. I shook him off angrily and snarled at him. He cowered in the moment that I looked at him before I glared back up at the girl.
"Come on!"
She was scared, I could see that easily. She crouched down, then leapt, losing her footing just as she did. It was a sickening jump with an even more sickening crack as she hit the ground. I could see red-white on the outside of her fur and heard her scream. I groaned and told the boy, "Follow me." I picked up the girl, her screams growing still more intense and annoyingly ear-piercing.
The three of us headed out through the inferno, the boy nudging my hind leg at every step. Both of them were a reminder of why I never wanted cubs. We retraced my steps until we got to where I suppose I entered. Unfortunately, if this really was where I came in, it was blocked off with fire now.
I judged it for a moment, then looked down at the boy. I might be able to make the jump through, but he never would. If I carried him in my mouth, we'd both make it through. I'd have to put down the girl to do that, though. There was no telling if I could get back in to get whichever one I left. I put down the girl and picked up the boy. She would be lame; one leg was clearly broken. The boy was still whole. He was worth something.
I jumped through the flames, feeling the fire lick my pelt. I don't know if it caught or not; as soon as I was out, I ran for the waterhole I saw a few meters out and threw myself and the cub in. I could hear the cub splutter and yanked him out onto the shore, then dunked my head under. I brought it back up to see the two cheetah parents by me, their eyes frantic.
"Sisha's still in there!" the mother protested.
"I'm not going back in," I growled.
"Help! Mommy! Help!" I could barely hear the little girl's wails over the roars of the flames.
"Oh, gods, Sisha!" the male cheetah yelled.
"You have to go get her!" the female demanded.
"I'm not going back in there," I said. "And nothing short of hell's going to make me."
"Mommy! Daddy! Mommy!"
"Oh gods, she's going to die!" screamed the mother. "Do something!" she yelled at the male. "Do something!"
"She's already broke a leg, she's going to have a miserable life. Just let her die," I said. I picked up the boy and began to walk back to the shaman's den.
"She's my baby! Oh, gods—" I really don't understand what the cheetah did next. She just went and barreled into the flames, straight for her daughter. She's crazy, I thought. The male had some sense; he just watched. I thought that she should be getting counseling from the shaman, not me. I just kept carrying my cub.
The mother did show up later at the shaman's, but not for counseling. She had her cub with her, and both of them had horrendous burns. I found that I'd gotten some mild ones, and I'd told the shaman what I thought about that. The cub was dead, and the mother nearly so, and the shaman made sure she told me exactly what she thought about that after we were done treating all the victims we could. She took me outside her den, away from all the animals that would be staying in it, and sat me down.
"Look," she said. I'm not quite sure what she said after that. I remember there was a lot of profanity, a lot of preaching, and a lot of me just glaring back. I didn't say a word through the whole thing. I was just doing my best to ignore her. I got the general gist that she was deriding me for being "unfeeling," but any sane person in my position would have done the same.
After she was done, I was still fairly pissed. I went home and strangled Ushairi. I might as well put my energies into something constructive that night.
oOo
The next few days with the shaman fell into a routine. She had me helping her treat all the injured, once again under the threat of death. I found the act of treating them mildly interesting. It was the catering to them that nearly made me vomit. It was sickening, me being told what to do and unable to do anything other than just comply. I wasn't at all sorry when a few of them began to die off.
Finally the last few of them began to move out. All of them thanked her graciously, and a few of them had the courtesy to tell her to commend her "assistant" as well. Times like these made me want to expand my horizons beyond just Ushairi.
After the last one left, the shaman looked at me real hard for a few moments and finally said to me, "Good job." She gave me a smile, and it quickly slunk off to wherever it came from after it was obvious I wasn't going to return it. She sighed. "You did a good thing." She stared at me for a moment, then said, "You don't think so, do you?"
"I think," I said bitterly, "that I was completely humiliated for two weeks."
She hung her head. "Look, Shujaa," she said. "I . . . I really don't understand what's going on up there. I don't know if I can fix it. But it is a crying shame if you can't tell that what you did was a good thing. What you did was good, was noble, was kind—none of this is getting to you, is it?"
"Not at all," I said, lying my head down.
"Are you even listening to me?"
"Not really."
There was a pause. I don't know what she was doing; I didn't bother looking up. I was being bored. Finally she lied down by my side and asked quietly, "Is there anything I can do to make you listen?"
I turned to look at her. "You are working for a lost cause," I said firmly, meeting her eyes. I wanted there to be no mistake about what I was saying. "You're trying to make me into something that is wrong, and is most certainly not me. I'm not going to change. There's nothing you can do to make me. I have to do this. It's for all of you. You won't have to worry about going to rest with any sins; I'm taking them all for you. I've already told you all this, so you should just stop and give up. Let me go. You're not going to get anything but frustration out of this."
She stared at me long and hard after that. Finally she sighed and looked away. There was a long silence, during which I just laid down my head and looked away, bored once again. Finally she spoke. "I'm not going to stop trying, Shujaa. It's not what you want, and it's not what I really want, either. But if you can—change, I want you to. I don't like causing others grief. . . . I'm going to help you, Shujaa. I want you to be able to enjoy society. There's a lot you're missing out on. I just want to help."
"You know, do you even believe half of all that crap you just said?" I asked in annoyance as I looked over at her.
She still was looking away. "I do want to help you."
"Then leave me alone."
I stood up and walked out of her den, slightly annoyed by the mushy way things had turned back in there. I heard her move behind me, but I didn't look back to see what she wanted. I left and she didn't call me back. I spent the rest of my day lounging.
oOo
The next day I was back in her den again. It was the same as usual. She didn't have anything to say to me about the day before. I didn't have anything to say either. It was one of the best conversations we'd had so far.
I did my usual, routine check to make sure there were enough plants and herbs, though I had figured out long ago that she did that before I even came every morning. After I was done, I'd tell her what was short, and she'd ask me to go get it, me doing some and her doing some. It was no different today. After that, we'd lie in her den, talking sporadically, taking care of the occasional animal that came in. Once again, it was no different today.
One memorable day, we got into a fight. She got ticked off at the lack of "progress" in my "therapy" and things took a turn for the worse. One second I was lying on my back, bored out of my skull, and the next she was literally strangling me. We fought. It wasn't nice, it wasn't elegant, it was crude and blunt. She knew a little about fighting, I could see that. She tried to use techniques on me that took a little practice, at least. I didn't know a thing, but I did know that ramming her head into the wall or ground went a long way toward me winning the fight.
I pinned her from the ground, me bleeding from several scratches, and her on her back with what was undoubtedly a massive headache. "Did you like that?" she hissed at me, struggling against me. "Did you? Huh?"
She'd snapped, I could see that. I thought of several somewhat witty things to say, all of them involving her being in my place. All of them flew out of my head as she kicked me square in the groin, inflicting more pain on me than I'd ever felt. I collapsed on top of her, gasping. She bit my ear. After a few moments of recovery I wrenched my head away from her, and hit her across the face as hard as I could. After that I limped out of her den, snarling.
The next day I came back. She didn't say sorry, she didn't offer to treat my wounds. I had to do that myself. She lied in the back of the den, nursing her head and what looked like a bump. I didn't get close enough to look. It was the quietest day I ever spent with her. I'm still waiting to hear that she's sorry.
And then the day came when everything began to change, at least for me. A leopard walked into the den. He was one of the ones from the fire. He'd had a few minor burns on him, but he'd left fairly quickly. He'd been gone almost two weeks. He glanced at me, then looked over at the shaman. She was glaring at him. "Vessa, I have a problem," he said.
"Don't we all?"
He swallowed slowly. "I—feel terrible."
"I'd be a little worried if you didn't," she said acidly.
"It's not what you think it is."
"Oh, well then please tell me. I'm sure I'd find it enlightening. The perfect thing to brighten up my day."
The leopard hung his head. "You don't want to help me, do you?"
"I have to whether I like it or not. So spit the damn thing out."
"I'm having issues," the leopard said. He began to lie down and make himself comfortable.
"Trust me," said the shaman coldly, "this is going to be a short visit. You can keep standing."
The leopard looked at her for a moment, his face tinged with disbelief and hurt. I sniggered. It was nice to see someone enjoying the shaman's sharp tongue, and not at my expense for once.
"You know I'm taking a risk just coming to you," said the leopard.
"That's your own damn fault. Now spit out what your problem is. Now."
"I've got problems with Kiasa."
"Like I said, your own damn fault."
"It's not—like that. I guess it is, but . . . I just can't seem to make her happy anymore. I just can't stop feeling like I'm losing her. I just feel depressed all the time. I'm not happy anymore."
"Have you thought that—just maybe—you're depressed?"
"I think I am. But I don't know why. I keep telling myself I've got a good life, a good mate, cubs to look forward to—"
"Cubs?" The shaman was practically seething. The leopard hesitated, then nodded somberly. "How wonderful."
"Can you please just help me?" He was practically begging. I had newfound respect for the shaman; I'd never quite seen this side of her. "I—need you," said the leopard pathetically.
"When did you start feeling this way?" asked the shaman, obviously annoyed. She laid her head down. Her desire to get this done and over with was overwhelming.
"About—two, three weeks ago. Not long after the fire."
The shaman closed her eyes.
"Uh, Vessa?"
"Shut up," she said. "I'm thinking."
The leopard fell silent. He looked over at me with an odd stare. I didn't know what he was thinking. I just ignored him. If he wasn't worth the shaman's time, then he most certainly wasn't worth mine.
"What plant did I give you for the fire?" the shaman finally asked.
"What—plant?"
Her eyes opened in irritation. "For the burns, idiot."
"Oh. You told me to take selv, along with yson . . ."
The shaman lifted her head from the ground, staring blankly at him, then groaned and shook her head. "Oh gods, I am so stupid!" She got up and began looking around all her plant stores, looking at each pile separately, in no conceivable order at all.
"What?" asked the leopard anxiously. "What's the problem?"
"Get out," she said. "Just go."
"What?"
"Get out, I have work to do."
"But what about my—"
"Just halve your damn allotment, you'll be fine." She continued pawing through her piles.
"But it'll hurt more," the leopard whined.
"Then take three times as much all at once. It'll hurt a lot less, I guarantee it."
"But I couldn't I die if I do that?" asked the leopard, shocked.
"And the world would be a better place. Now get out before I send you back to your damn mate with half your tail." She turned to look at the leopard. "Now!"
The leopard left quickly. I watched her go through her piles, taking a few out of several and leaving the rest. There wasn't anything wrong with them that I could see. Finally I said, "Are you going to tell me what you're doing, or am I going to have to hold my breath?"
"There's a cure," she said. "I can't believe I didn't see it before, but I just wasn't thinking about it the right way, and you just have to look at it from a different perspective, it's not that you have to cure anti-sociality, you just have to fix the emotions . . ."
Her voice trailed off. I'd rarely seen her this excited before. She usually only got this way when she was treating a difficult patient and she finally realized just what they needed. Of course, there was only one patient that she had right now. "Who was the jerk, anyway?" I asked.
She stopped cold. "He . . . I knew him. He was my—lover, for lack of a better word, for a while. In short, he had an affair with another, and left me when I found out about it. I don't really want to talk about it."
"I thought talking was good," I said mockingly.
"Just let me get back to work," she said. I left her to it, but partway through I asked, "Can I at least leave?"
"No."
I growled and laid my head down. The only thing I had to do was lie down while she ran around her den, making little piles of herbs on her floor. It went on for what seemed like hours. Gods, I was bored.
Finally she stood back and sat down. "Alright," she said, then again, "Alright." She turned to look at me, then back at the last pile she'd made. "I think," she said, finally speaking to me, "that I've found something that'll help you. Come here."
I stayed put. She knew better than to try to order me around like that, at least. She sighed, then said, "Come here please."
I grudgingly pushed myself up off the floor. She busied herself with getting the smallest amount of each plant in the pile, but still maintaining a ratio. The process was ridiculously simple, at least to me. I had a mind for numbers.
"And just what is this supposed to do?"
"You're either going to be much more personable, or you're going to be a very, very sad lion."
She sorted out a few more of an herb, then added a couple of another back in after she realized she took too many out. She picked the remaining pile up in her mouth, then laid it down on another bare patch of ground to ensure that it wouldn't have anything accidentally added to it or taken away.
I stared at the pile hard and finally said, "It's wrong."
"Huh?"
"You're off on the acuyle." I looked up at her. "Why is that even in here?"
"To counteract the side effects. We don't want you running off and killing yourself, do we?"
She looked it over again, then saw I was right and fixed it. She placed it in the little stone basin she had for mixing over by a wall, then added blood for flavoring from another basin roughly the same size. Gods know where she found them. They were the only two stone basins she had, and she treated them with the utmost care.
She put the basin with the herbs in it down in front of me. "Eat up."
I looked down at the few herbs in the basin, then back up at her. "No."
She only blinked in reaction. "Yes."
"No."
"Yes."
"No."
"Ye—"
"I told you, shaman," I said testily. "You want to help me, you leave me alone. There isn't a thing wrong with me. The only thing that I have is abnormality, and you're not going to cure that."
"Well, I can try," she said, gesturing toward the basin with a forepaw.
I glared up at her, then knocked the basin across the den, its contents scattering. I didn't even bother to look at her as I got up and left. The only things I heard from her were her sudden gasp, and then her slow, angry snarl.
oOo
I was lying in the corner of my den when King Janja came up to me. "Shujaa, I'd like to talk with you."
"Yes?" I asked. I inwardly groaned. She'd gone and ratted on me.
"Outside, please."
I rolled my eyes and got up. I knew someone would hear somehow, and it would be across the den in half a day, whatever it was. There really was no privacy here at all. I followed him outside. "What is it, sire?"
He hesitated. I saw his eyes flick momentarily behind me. "Shujaa—"
I felt something pounce on me, making me stagger. The king knocked me to the ground. It all happened so quickly, I almost didn't have any idea what was happening. King Janja pinned me down, and I saw the shaman's face come into view. She hit me across the face, and I cried out in pain. In that one moment where my mouth was open, she pressed her mouth over mine, our jaws interlocking. I felt something drop into the back of my throat and gagged. She removed her mouth, and I instinctively swallowed, feeling something go down my throat, before I spat in her face.
"What the hell do you think you're doing?" I snarled.
"Giving you your medicine," she said. I don't know how my surprise showed, but I hated that smirk on her face.
"You backstabbing bitch—"
"Shujaa!" reprimanded the king.
"Get off me!" I said angrily, pushing him off. I rolled over and stood up. "What makes you think you can do this to me?!"
"Come back to my den tomorrow and we won't have to go through this again," said the shaman.
"Oh, you bit—"
"Shujaa!"
"Oh, shut up, sire, I'll say as I damn well please!"
"Not if you value your place in this kingdom, you won't! I've been far too lenient with you in the past—"
"Who do you think you are to tell me what to do? Who're any of you to think you can tell me what to do?"
"That's enough!" said King Janja angrily. "I won't have this insubordination in my pride!"
"I've done more for this pride than you ever could have in your life! You're nothing but a washed-up shell compared to me!"
I would forever remember today as the day I got smacked for the first time. Yes, I'd been in physical fights before, so obviously it's not my first time I got hit before. But this was the first time I really got smacked, with no provocation whatsoever. King Janja just let me have it across the face.
"I will not be spoken to that way," he said sternly.
Oh, how I could kill a lion. He was dead. He forced that crappy-tasting ball down my throat, and then he slapped me for it? He was so dead. There was nothing I could do but snarl, though. No one appreciated me. Especially not this son of a bitch. He was just as bad as Aushi, I saw that now. Assholism apparently ran in the family.
"Did you hear me, Shujaa?"
My gods, he wanted to die, didn't he? I felt myself shaking with the effort of restraining myself. It took even more work to quietly turn and walk away. Far away.
"Don't forget," said the shaman. "My place tomorrow."
I turned and roared at her as loud as I could, then continued walking. They were both dead, I swore it.
