SECHS

Mondnacht

The pair had walked into a wide cave, into which moonlight filtered through a small opening in the ceiling. Around them was a tight perimeter of lions, all staring intently at these strange newcomers. "Damn it all, it's a trap!" Hermann yelled. "Someone's had us! How many rounds in that revolver?"

"Five, soon to be four! Plug your ears and run!" cried out his friend. But Hermann saw something that gave him a moment's pause.

"Warten, bis jetzt noch nicht! Not yet!" A thin sliver of moonlight had illuminated a smaller circle of lions within the larger group. In the middle of this circle lay the target of the animal Markos had seen earlier, the one who he had been seconds away from firing upon before it slunk away, blood-covered and seemingly grinning. Hermann could see, despite the dim conditions, that this creature in front of him was also a lion, quite young and, more importantly, straddling a thin line between survival and death. The extent of his injuries would have been more than enough to deduce the latter –to come under such attack, survive, and feel no ill effects afterwards was surely a physical impossibility—but the sounds he could hear, the cries the cub made as he lay on the ground in that awful pool of blood…Hermann Wolfgang Sterlitz knew, immediately, that in front of him were the worst injuries he had seen in his career, even after a lengthy residency and more than enough time spent in his hospital's trauma unit. Gunshot wounds, job-site explosions, the occasional traffic accident, even a memorable instance of amateur fireworks manufacturing gone bad…none of it came even close to what he was seeing at that moment. All he could do was stand there with his mouth half-open, staring at the lion cub covered in gashes and bite marks and trying to think of something half-intelligent to say. He had half a mind to blurt out, "So this is what we've been looking for," to Markos, but Hermann wouldn't get the chance. One of the lionesses comprising the protective inner circle stepped forward, and looking directly at Markos, said, "Don't…shoot." Markos looked like he was going to be sick.

"Hermann, tell me I'm dreaming. Tell me I ate or drank something on the airplane, tell me I'm sick; tell me that thing did not just speak!"

All Hermann could manage was a feeble, "OK, I won't tell you then." He had been thinking the same thing—that the entire event was a dream and that any minute, he was going to wake up back at the campsite, but no such luck. "Put the pistol away," he finally said in a whisper.

"Oh, that's just great, we're surrounded by talking wild animals and you want me to put our only means of self-defense away? Was your grandfather, by any chance, a Kamikaze?"

"No, he was born in Bonn…never mind that, just put the gun away!"

The lioness had not discontinued her approach, and was now within feet of the thoroughly confused pair. She had not understood any of the exchange that had just taken place between Markos and Hermann; all she knew was that these two strangers were the foreigners she had heard about from the others, that they were the only thing standing between the crying cub and death. Somehow, despite the communication barrier, she had to get through to them.

"Please, stop arguing; can you understand me?" she nervously asked Hermann. Hermann thought for a minute, still bewildered and confused.

"Ja…yes, I can understand."

"Good, if you'll follow me over here and bring everything you've brought along with you, I'll…"

Hermann had to interrupt. "Langsamer, bitte, langsamer. Slower, please. I cannot understand when you speak that quickly."

She regrouped and continued: "I, we, need your help. Can you help us, please?"

"Help with what?" asked Hermann, although he knew where this conversation was most likely to lead.

"Come with me," she said. Hermann turned to his friend and motioned for him to follow. Slowly they walked toward the injured lion cub, with Hermann's cane making a wooden tap, tap noise on the stones below. "Can you not walk any faster than that?"

"No, I can't." Hermann answered, "I'm disabled. Who is that, and what happened to him?"

"His name is Kopa," the lioness explained. "He was attacked some time tonight, we're not sure by whom, but whoever it was, he or she almost killed him. He's alive, but only just."

I think I know who your prime suspect is, thought Hermann, remembering how Markos had nearly shot at the unknown animal from inside the car.

"That is his mother, Nala. She is the one who originally sent me out to get you," continued the lioness, looking toward another lioness at the cub's side. The expression on her face was not much better, all things considered, than that of her son.

"But what are we supposed to do here?" continued Hermann. "This is not…"

"You two are the only chance he has. We aren't able to treat injuries as severe as his. Please, I'm begging you, you have to try and help him. Otherwise…" her voice trailed off. When she looked again at Hermann and Markos, tears had filled her eyes; they were already falling from the faces of the lions surrounding Kopa, whose condition hadn't gotten any better in the wasted time the two doctors had spent arguing outside. Hermann was far from completely understanding every word that had just been said to him, but the images in front of his eyes told him all he needed to know. Markos, not able to understand even one word, was similarly keyed in, although not yet able to put his revolver away for good.

"Go back outside and get the bag of stuff, and bring it back to me in here," Hermann said to Markos after a few seconds of silence.

"The bag of stolen stuff, you mean," Markos said as he exited the cave, stepping backwards without ever turning around. Unfortunately for him, this resulted in multiple collision with the rock walls before he found the tunnel he was looking for.

"What did you tell him?" asked the lioness in front of Hermann, whose name he had still not learned.

"To get my things, the medicine I took…um…borrowed, from the hospital. Sorry, he speaks only German. Nobody here happens to speak any German, do they?" He knew the answer to the question before ever asking it.

With Markos having gone outside, Hermann was secretly expecting to hear the sound of a starting engine, followed by that of an old car peeling away into the night, but soon enough he heard the sound of his friend's footsteps coming back inside. Hermann opened the suitcase with an uninspiring look—if the contents had not been hopelessly jumbled during the flight from Berlin, then it was the car ride that had done them in—but he was ultimately able to find what he was looking for. He looked over toward the lioness who had led him in, trying to piece his words and sentences together in his mind before speaking. This conversation had moved way beyond the normal conversational English—and the normal person-to-person dynamic in any language—he was used to, or at least capable of understanding with a certain degree of fluency. At last, Hermann spoke as best he could: "I will try to do what I can. This is not…normal…for me, but I will try." The lioness nodded in grateful approval. Hermann walked over, with Markos in ever-vigilant tow, to where Kopa was lying.

"Kannst Du mich hören?" Hermann asked Kopa in German to no avail, before trying the same question in English: "Can you hear me?" Still, he heard no response. "I've seen this a million times before…he has to be in shock," he said to Markos. "He's going to need stitches on all those injuries, antibiotics to keep any infection at bay, and all the fluids we've got and more. Is there any saline in that bag?"

"'A million times before'…just a slight exaggeration, no? And yes, you've got three bottles in here, plus one you seemingly emptied and replaced with…sniff…whiskey? Wow, Sterlitz, this really is a new low, even for you." Hermann ignored his friend's color commentary and tried his best to concentrate.

I'll need a sedative as well; I'm going to have to do as much as I can while he's sleeping, Hermann thought, otherwise it's going to be too difficult for the both of us. "Markos, any sedatives in there?" Markos rummaged through the bag, tossing out a suture kit before finding what his friend had requested.

"What the hell's this doing in here in the first place?" he asked, unable to figure out why Hermann had seen fit to bring general anesthetic on a vacation to Africa.

"Who knows, and I don't really care either way," replied Hermann, "all that matters is, we have it with us. Give me fifty milligrams' worth."

Hermann looked over at Kopa's mother, still lying beside her injured son, and, once again pausing to consider his choice of words, said, "You might…not want to watch this." He injected the sedative where he figured the best spot to do so on a lion was, and watched Kopa slowly drift off to sleep, even though the pained look remained on his face afterward. "Mein Gott, this is bad," he said to himself, eyeing a particularly bad gouge on Kopa's side, "but at least it looks like I've gotten the dosage correct". His head was still reeling from everything he had just seen, but he couldn't bring himself to mention it; he had neither the fortitude to let anyone know of his own emotions, nor much confidence in his linguistic ability to accurately do so in the first place. Silently, he went about his work, wondering how on Earth he had managed to stumble into such a strange situation.