The Huntress at Sunset

2. Nengwalamwe Alone

Something pulled Nengwalamwe away from uneasy dreams – something about a young, lithe lioness. He blearily opened his eyes.

A small, warm, unthreatening voice spoke to him, "Hey, are you a lion?"

He looked to where the voice came, expecting to see some strange and curious creature. He was surprised and by what he did see, especially when it bent down and licked his cheek.

"Yeah, sorry. I just had to - you know – make sure. You don't mind, do you?"

The lion lay still for a moment then lifted his head and yawned showing all his teeth. Had he been more awake he might have lashed out at the strange cub who had just licked his… Cub? His thoughts overflowed into words: "A cub! What are you doing here? Who are you?" His mind cleared a little. He leaned his head toward her. "Where are the rest of you?"

"What rest of me? Oh.… you mean my pride don't you?"

"Yeah, like I said: the rest of you." He considered rising and walking around the cub, showing off his size and power. Then he decided not to bother - the cub wasn't worth the effort. If the cub lived close by, he was more than likely on her father's territory. That lion was Nengwalamwe's main concern. If he was alone then Nengwalamwe might do worse than to challenge him and take control of his pride. So he needed to milk the cub for information; to find out as much as possible about the pride's male, or males, before deciding whether to challenge them or move on. "Where's your father?"

"My father..." The cub looked sad and alone. "He's… he's not here."

"So, who looks after you?"

"Oh, I get by pretty well. You know I'm older than I look."

He looked at her carefully. She looked like a ten-month-old cub. She was still not adult, yet not totally dependent; she could not be living alone.

"Come on, you've got to have a mother, surely?"

"Oh yeah, 'course!"

"And aunts?"

"Yeah...Well sorta."

She sounded evasive, and too trusting for her own good. She had given him a clear picture of a small pride with no males, just right for a young lion like Nengwalamwe - provided the lionesses weren't too old of course. "So, where do you live?" He half expected her to lead him to them. "Where's your pride now?"

She flicked her head round in the direction of the far off rock pinnacle. "Over there, stupid!" Between lay plains, wetlands, kopjes, ridges, knolls, thickets and a river. On those plains, some places were darkened with prey; prey of every species Nengwalamwe had ever encountered. The terrain offered rich cover: shoulder high grasses, brush, trees, boulders, rises and gullies. It was a land so rich that lions should have been falling over each other, yet this cub seemed to be saying that her pride was so weak as to be hardly be worth taking.

"What are you doing all the way out here? You know it's dangerous for cubs to stray onto other prides' lands? Come on, I'll take you home."

"Dangerous? For me?" She laughed; a giggle as if Nengwalamwe had said something really stupid. "What other prides? Why should I worry about any other prides? You're the first lion I've seen for… well, ages and ages…and ages… and ages."

What was 'ages' to a cub? If she was right about there being no other prides, then her father may have died in some accident or through sickness rather than in a border dispute or challenge. It didn't occur to Nengwalamwe that he might have simply died of old age. The idea of an old lion was totally alien to him. Lions didn't grow old, they never grew old, they died suddenly, violently and in the prime of life. He never even thought of himself as 'older' than when he was a cub, he was simply a lion and that was all there was to it.

"But Cubbie, this place must be full of lion. Where are all the other prides?"

She shook her head sadly. "Nope, no other prides. None. Not one."

"NONE? Come on now, don't mess me about Cubbie, I ain't come all this way for nothing."

"Oh no, I'm not messing you." She began to snivel sadly, "I only wanted to be friends. Can't we be friends?"

Nengwalamwe looked at her. Thinking back to the mountainside, he knew now what it was like to be alone. He raised a forepaw and rested his pads on her hunched shoulder. He moved his head over to hers. He rubbed his muzzle over her cheek gently. It didn't matter that she was some other male's cub; she had an instinct-disarming charm that cried out to be loved.

"I'm sorry; of course we can be friends. Just lay off calling me stupid. Err; do you think I can be friends with your mother too?"

She looked into his eyes blankly then wriggled out from under his paw. She gave him a mischievous look and then dashed off down the rise. Before Nengwalamwe could get up to follow she had disappeared into the grasses.

"What did I say?" he called as the rustling of the grass died down. "Aaah, I'll find her again. I'll soon pick up her scent." He lifted his head and sniffed the air - nothing. He sniffed at the ground - nothing. He sniffed his paw that he had just lain on her shoulder - nothing - nothing except the warm, full richness of the savannah. The intricate blend of scents was just as it had been at the top of the mountain pass: no lion scent at all save his own. The dense sights, mingled sounds and full scents of a savannah morning rose up all around him; none were those of lion.

He looked up, turning his head to the distant rock. He stretched out his forelegs, shaking them gently, his paws splayed out on the ground ahead. He lifted his hindquarters and pulled his spine straight in an all-encompassing stretch. When he had drawn out the last of the stiffness from his limbs he padded his forepaws back toward his body, lifting himself so that he stood upright. He looked to the rock again. "That's where she went, that's where I've got to go. That's what I came here for - that's why I'm here!" He lifted his head, opening his mouth wide and straightening his neck. Against all sense, he roared - a long, loud full roar: "Ready or not, Nengwalamwe's coming to save you all!" He waited a beat and listened as it slipped back to him off the distant rock, warmed and smoothed by the sun. The great rock though, could wait.

Nengwalamwe had never lived alone. He had had a few thoughts, as many young adolescents do, of running away and leaving his family far behind. He would be able to live how he liked, do whatever he wanted.

Now he was able to live that dream, it was not at all as he had imagined. His first days and nights in this new land held many excitements and diversions: places to explore; animals to roar at, chase, and hunt; trees and rocks to mark. He didn't think of having a territory, he wandered wildly. He expected to come across another male's scent but found none.

Soon, though, he had explored all the places he could find. He had chased, roared at, and hunted, or at least tried, all the different prey animals. He had marked every tree and every crevice of every rock.

He could go where he liked, but he had no particular reason to go anywhere. He could do what he liked, but there was nothing he wanted to do. He could hunt when he liked, and he ate rather less often than he hunted. He could wash when he liked, which was often - his mother and, to his credit, his father, had always impressed upon their growing son that no lioness would ever be interested in a lion who covered her in savannah dust. He could sleep for as long as he liked - he liked that best of all. His mother could no longer nose him awkwardly under his ribs to rouse him.

He began returning to the same spot to sleep. It took on a comforting scent. It was as near as he could get to a place to call 'home'. Day merged into day, night into night, hunt into hunt, and sleep into sleep as the excitement of his new-found life wore off. He didn't have anyone to talk to, and at sunset each day he heard no roars of his own kind: no males powerfully proclaiming their ownership of females and territory. He was truly alone.

Nengwalamwe told himself that this mattered little; for the first time in his life he was free. He felt he was especially free of lionesses and all the trouble they had brought upon him. The worst had been Llasani, but she had been only the most recent in a long line of lionesses that Nengwalamwe felt had wronged him. Even his mother, Melakwe, the only lioness who had ever really mattered to him, had shown at the last, that she did not understand him. No matter how independent he felt, there were still times when he thought back to happier days. In all those days there was someone else there with him.

He imagined himself lying at his mother's side with his chin tucked over her foreleg, while she licked his head and neck, her soft interrupted purring filling his ears. He remembered the sound fading and returning repeatedly as she licked down each swath of his fur. He could forgave her everything just to feel it again. He was even prepared to forgive his father to hear his nightly territorial claims.

As social as lions are, it is eating that is closest to their mind. Though Nengwalamwe wanted to eat, he decreasingly felt inclined to hunt. As such he was a typical lion, and typically a young lion at that. He regarded hunting as someone else's job. His mother's in fact, but she wasn't there.

The time eventually came, however, for Nengwalamwe to find food for himself. Looking around as he woke at sunset, as unsettlingly quiet as the evening before, he noticed the unhurried pace of life around him. Here and there small groups of zebra grazed gently, stopping only to gaze at him for a few seconds before quietly moving on. Around them wildebeest grumbled, grunting across the grass. Birds sat nonchalantly in distant trees, seemingly unworried by anything. Wherever the young lion looked there was prey, prey of every species he had ever imagined – leaping gazelle, snuffling warthog, chirping zebra, twitchy impala, bullish buffalo, dull-boring wildebeest, curve-ridden kudu, all were everywhere. He got up, stretched lazily and walked out, the tip of his tongue poking out slightly between his loosely opened night-black lips. As the lion wandered about, the prey eyed him warily, as if unaccustomed to seeing a lion.

In places, and Nengwalamwe visited many in his wanderings, there was new life, the first faltering steps of newborn wildebeest and zebra: moments so important that failure meant a life over just as it barely began. Once, he idly watched a couple of young male cheetahs, two brothers in coalition probably, stifle the breath of one of the night's newest born zebra foals. He turned away and left them to their meal.

All this unfolded around the lion as he got to know his 'kingdom' as he began to think of it, but a king of what? Life on the rolling plains around him went on as it had for so long before he came. His presence was nothing to the plains, and for the most part to those who lived around him. They knew he wasn't much of a threat; one of the first lessons all young wildebeest learn is how to tell when a big predator is hunting.

He soon began to think that he had explored most of the land around him. The only place he did not go was the vast sundered rock pinnacle. It seemed too special, somewhere he didn't deserve to go. In any case there was no need; he had everything he needed right where he was. When prey fell down in front of him begging to be eaten – a male baboon - he felt sure that he had found his very own paradise.

The land was stunningly beautiful ,but as his mother had so often told him: 'Nengwe dear, you can't eat the scenery.' Though there was game of every imaginable species, he longed for just one taste of Gemsbok, just like mom used to catch. He avoided catching large game; he was just too big and clumsy to catch even a calf. Despite his strength, his size worked against him: he lacked real pace in the chase. He concentrated his few hunting efforts on smaller prey species; often lying in wait for hours for some gazelle or other to stray his way rather than actively stalking. He would sometimes fall asleep in the long grasses only to wake up even more alone than ever; the savannah grazers having quietly moved on while he slept.

Warthogs proved catchable enough, though they fought back, which spoilt the hunt. He never quite felt comfortable eating such filthy animals. They left his lower mane covered in blood, dust and pad-sized clods of dried mud. Large kills were too much trouble and he might forget where he left the part-eaten carcass. He was never able to dine twice on a kill that should have fed him for three or more days. Was it possible that something was stealing his kills? Even well-hidden small kills sometimes moved about.

He had little contact with scavengers and other less fussy links in the savannah food chain. The few hyena he saw seemed very wary of him and usually ran off when approached. He wondered what had turned the bane of all lions into these timid and frightened creatures. At night he often heard the howling and baying of wild dogs but only once did he ever hear the chatter and yelps of a hyena pack.

Life, if dull, was reassuringly secure. His thoughts turned slowly to getting himself a pride with cubs and a few lionesses to look after him.

Maybe lionesses are not all that bad, he thought. So long as they keep their mouths shut and have a kill waiting for me when I get home. To Nengwalamwe this was what every lion deserved. His father said it was the lion's reward for brightening up the lionesses' otherwise dull lives. If they dared to step a claw out of line then he would put them firmly in their place. Nengwalamwe looked forward more and more to persuading a lioness or two to do what he wanted.

He sometimes thought about what might have happened after he had left his homeland, Kolata. In his mind he could see the cruelly beautiful, or was it beautifully cruel, Llasani cowering down before his father's stern gaze. She was begging for his forgiveness. If she were very lucky he would let her off with banishment for bringing his son into disrepute. She might even come looking for her Nengwalamwe. She might one day stand in front of him again - a sad, broken little lioness with no friends in the whole world. Nengwalamwe wondered - casually and with little consideration for her - what he would say to her as he denied her of his protection and sent her away:

'I have no need of your deception and lies. Go now, before I kill you!'

'But my king, I would do anything if you would only forgive me. Save me! I have nowhere else to go. I have no one to turn to but you.'

'I cannot be king to you, for you do not respect me, nor do you obey my command. Be gone forever from my sight!'

In Nengwalamwe's dream the distraught lioness, her coat dusty, dull and ragged, her ribs showing beneath her undernourished, tick-ridden flanks, dropped her head in despair. Then she turned and walked away slowly, crying and snivelling.

Yeah! he congratulated himself. That's the way to treat an evil little lioness like her! And if she won't go I'll just have to 'persuade her' in the only way her type can understand.

A noise from the grass filtered into Nengwalamwe's dream and brought him cruelly out of sleep. Before the urge to yawn overtook him, he looked about. Except for a few restless impala down by the distant river's edge, and the vultures lifting and circling from the tallest acacias, everything was still in the heat of the afternoon.

The tree canopy above him shook. As Nengwalamwe looked up, a brilliantly blue and orange bird flapped noisily into the still air and climbed away. The lion yawned and slumped back on to his forelegs, rolling his head to one side to get more comfortable.

He tried to get back to sleep but the stifling heat made his legs damp and sticky. Through the stillness he thought he heard something… but what exactly was that sound? It was a crinkling, crumpling, like a paw slowly pushing over the stalks of dry grass. He lay awake and listened, with his eyes still closed. For ten or more seconds he heard nothing. Then it came again; a small, delicate sound; a sound from behind him. He rolled over slowly as if still in sleep and tucked his head against his flank, flapping his dark lips as he rubbed his chin on his side.

The sound came again; a little closer. A heart-thumping thought coalesced in his mind: was he being hunted? Leopard? No, it wasn't their style, and what sort of fool would try to hunt an adult lion? Lioness? There had been no signs of any, and it might not be such a bad thing. He quickly dismissed that ridiculous idea. Hyena? No, no lone hyena would ever bother to creep up on a lion through cover, that was far too complex for them to understand, and anyway, the hyena he'd seen would never have the guts to hunt a lion. So, what could it be?

He prised his right eye open, forming a tiny crack through which he could dimly make out his surroundings. For a moment he saw nothing unexpected, then the horizon moved. It rippled like the back of a lioness on the hunt. Then a terrifying thought struck him: could his father have caught up with him? He opened both eyes, for a second they were blinded by the light of the afternoon. He blinked repeatedly as his eyes adjusted, showing him flashes of a very young lioness. No, not a lioness - a cub, an almost adolescent cub; he was being stalked by – Oh, it's that cub again!

"Oo, you're awake..."

"What do you think you're doing? You could have got yourself killed!"

"I wasn't going to pounce, honest I wasn't."

Nengwalamwe stared hard at the cub. She stood just two of her lengths from him, but no matter how hard he tried he could not recall her scent. On days such as this, the air full of the heat of the savannah sun, her scent should have pervaded everything for many lengths around, yet he smelt nothing but the dry warmth of the grasses. Even the fastidious Nengwalamwe could not mask his scent that well. Llasani had certainly been totally unable to mask hers.

"Is that you?" Nengwalamwe blinked against the burning sun.

"Kinda."

"What's 'kinda' meant to mean? Who are you anyway?"

"I'm…"

Nengwalamwe drew his head forwards a little. The cub looked down at her forepaws.

"Yes? I can't keep calling you Cubbie, now can I?"

"Well, I guess not… You can call me Yali."

Nengwalamwe lifted his head a little. "Yali? There you are, that didn't hurt, did it?"

Yali tilted her head, looking at Nengwalamwe from the tops of her eyes.

"So, young Yali, what are you doing here?"

"I did say we lived down here you know. Welcome to the Pridelands."

"Welcome to what?"

"The Pridelands. That's here."

"Pride Lands - what..." Nengwalamwe grew worried. "…we?" Did this mean there was a pride of lions here? So he was on another pride's lands after all. What would the males think of him? No, Nengwalamwe knew exactly what they would think of him. Yali was young, not yet a year old. Her father had to be around somewhere, somewhere close. "Does that mean there's a… a pride here?"

"Well..."

"There is! There's lions here!" He swished his head to one side in panic. "Do they know about me? That's stupid - Yali, you know about me, they must do too. I must get away from here, I must go - now!"

"No, don't go." Yali's look grew close to terror and her tail swayed powerfully from side to side. "Please, we need you - we need another lion for the pride." She was nearly crying. "You can't go now. You can't, you belong here." She appeared a little calmer. "This is your home now."

Nengwalamwe stood up and shook his mane. He looked searchingly at the young cub standing before him. She seemed genuine enough, even though what little of her scent he could detect revealed nothing about her. Somehow she was already more than just someone to talk to. What was it about her that felled his natural suspicions? How was it that with her he dropped his defences and actually began to care?

He lowered his head and said quietly, "I won't leave you." He very gently shook his head. "I really won't leave you. Now then, what's frightened you so much? Having trouble with hyenas?"

Yali's ears pricked up. She almost smiled. "Not recently…, but we do need you. You can protect us."

"Protect you? From what?" Another thought struck him: he had indeed not seen any lions, but what if there were lions here? Not many, just a few lionesses and cubs, including young Yali. Perhaps they had had a male that had died, killed by some deadly adversary who had left the lionesses too terrified to show themselves. Perhaps they were in hiding, somewhere away from the world. Nengwalamwe's mind raced as he tried to think of all the places where lions might hide. Hide? We don't hide from anything… but lionesses like high rocky places with cracks where they can hide their newborns. It has to be close to water, it has to be safe...

"Please Nengwe. Don't leave us now. Please." As Yali stopped speaking her ears turned to pick up some unexpected ripple in the blanket of background sounds. Nengwalamwe heard nothing except the slight scrunch of her pawfall amongst the grass. She suddenly looked away.

"HEY! My name's Nengwalamwe, son of…!" But she was gone, running off down the eastern side of the ridge. What's she up to now? She looks as though she was being called by her mother! He wondered if he should follow her, or if she meant for him to stay where he was. Perhaps she would return later with her mother. He stood still and watched her run off, her form soon merging into the grass. She appeared to be heading for the massive rocks just to the north of the waterhole. Rocks? Waterhole? He considered for a moment. That's it. That's where they are: there on the rocks. That's where she lives!

He began to walk up the rise towards the rocks, but soon broke into a gently flowing lope. He could not merge his form into the grass like the cub; he was much too large for that. He followed her trail. It soon became indistinct and he found himself running over knee-high grass. Even though her track had faded, her route was distinct. It ran directly to the foot of a massive outcrop of towering rock: the very rock on the plain that Nengwalamwe had seen that first dawn, high up in the mountains.