The Huntress at Sunset

4. The Meeting

Nengwalamwe woke suddenly in the chill of the night. For a few moments he felt lost and disorientated as deep shadows crept toward him, oozing and slipping over the confused surfaces of the loose rocks that had so fascinated him a few hours before. It was almost as if the darkness that lay beyond the impenetrable boulder barrier was leaking out to claim him and draw him back into its icy heart. He felt the cold licking his back while from below the heat of the day poured from the mass of the rock slope to challenge the chill of the darkness. He felt torn between the heat of the day and the cool of the night.

His nocturnal instincts were slowly but steadily taking him back. He did not fear the dark; it was something that he embraced as an old friend. He was so familiar with the night that it held less uncertainty than the brightness of day. He had spent most of his waking hours in darkness. He welcomed its anonymity, its cloaking cover under which he could move more freely than in the harsh glare of savannah daylight. He knew his curiosity would never be satisfied until he had ventured and explored beyond the sharply jagged rock wall. He also felt that he might never be courageous enough to enter and explore its deepest recesses. He wanted to go in so much that he feared to do so, as it might engulf him. The rocks that lay between him and the cave just taunted him. They challenged his authority, his intellect and all that his mane stood for. They dared him to go further while barring his way - he knew he had to find a way past, even if it meant clawing the stone away grain by grain.

Through the thick of night came a sound Nengwalamwe had not heard for some moons, a sound that filled him with a mixture of pleasure and pain and set his pulse racing. For a moment he was not certain if he had really heard it at all. When it came again, rolling over the plain he felt a gust of life flood over him. His ears strained forward to pick up any traces of the sound he thought he had heard, but there were no more; nothing except the grumbles of a distant herd of wildebeest, unsettled by something unseen.

Nengwalamwe half dropped his ears and let his hind paws relax as he lay still on the warm slope of the rock. A few moments later he reassured himself that he had heard nothing but the call of a distant leopard for its cub.

He turned his ears back but dared not drop them to lie flat on his head. He took two deep breaths, filling his chest with the cool, fresh night air. He wished the tense pounding of his heart would subside as it filled him with surging energy and ripped away any hope of sleep. His back grew cold and clammy as his tension; similar to that he experienced as he prepared for the final leap at his prey; began at last to ebb away. Then, from the most distant edge of the darkness it came again, faint but unmistakable. This time he was sure that it was not a leopard. It was the call of a lioness guarding her kill. Nengwalamwe's pulse rose instantly and pounded in his mind, forcing him fully awake. He had to leave the rock and search for the source of the call. No matter how much Nengwalamwe tried to deny it, he was a social animal; he could not live cut off from his own kind for long. Now Nengwalamwe knew was no longer alone.

~oOOo~

The sun began its daily climb into the sky. The herbivorous inhabitants of the dry grasslands that were the plains of the Pridelands allowed themselves some relaxation from the tension of night. With the coming of day came the realisation that they had survived the dangers of the darkness and the unseen predators that lay hidden within its depths.

Not all had survived; to the east, close to the gorge that rent the Pridelands in two, a wild dog pack clustered noisily around what was left of an adolescent hartebeest. They ate urgently, gulping down great hunks of still warm flesh ripped off the bone by a flick of the head. They remained alert to the nearby pacing of a pair of hyena who waited impatiently, watching. Suddenly one of the dogs, frustrated at being shut out of the feast, decided that the hyenas had watched for too long. She rushed at them yelping madly, her tail high and ears pointed. A couple of her more sated relatives looked up from their meal. They shared her feelings and rose to join the chase. They did not have to go far; the hyenas turned and loped off without any signs of resistance. Within seconds the dogs returned to their kill.

Elsewhere an adult gemsbok had shared the fate of the hartebeest. It had not died exhausted at the end of the dog's relentless pursuit. Its end had been quick and clean, but lung-burstingly painful. It had died fighting for breath as a lioness crushed its throat in her jaws. However these were isolated islands of violent struggle and conflict on the otherwise calm sea of the plains.

A lone lioness padded resolutely, hungry but not intent on hunting. She walked at an even and unhurried pace; each step clearly separated from the last. As she lifted each paw she allowed her pads to roll off the ground beneath. Each hung limply at the end of her leg for a moment before she swung them forward and down to make the next contact with the earth, placing them precisely in the pawfall of the one in front. At every fourth paw fall she hesitated momentarily, though if she felt any discomfort her expression did not show it. Her experienced and hardened gaze was fixed on the way ahead. It revealed nothing of the emotions and feelings of the lioness within.

Her coat, once a rich glossy cub-spot mottled sunset brown above underfur of purest light sand, hung loosely, dulled by world-worn age. Countless small groups of healed parallel scratches marked her shoulders and sides. She had long since forgotten the source of most of them. Her ears, greying but still dark chocolate at their tips and behind, stood easy. Between her lips, partially held open to allow her to more easily take each breath in the growing heat, her teeth showed browned and thin and seemingly brittle. The dulled once piercing points had glowed white, but now they reflected little of the undiminished spirit that still burned within her. Her time-hardened, crack-crazed pads held her firm, feeling little now, felt all before. The animals she passed knew her, or knew of her, and saw that she was not in the mood for hunting. Her hearing remained sharp; the distant sounds of mother zebra telling their foals not to underestimate this oldest of lionesses still caught in her dark ears.

A few of the individuals she passed turned in alarm as she closed, but none raised their voice to sound a warning. She continued onwards without hesitation. The only sounds were a hesitant stutter of hooves and low muffled grunts. She knew where she was heading and why, her age may well have dulled her coat but not her mind. She had had an eventful life even though her steady progress suggested she might have always lived her life at such a subdued pace.

Her name was Shaha, though it had not always been so. She had taken the name years before as she followed in the family tradition as a teller of sunset tales to cubs. It had been a long time since she last had had any cubs to entertain. The last was her own daughter, Falana, but she was years out of cubhood. It was to join Falana that Shaha was walking; in response to her call that signalled the successful end of her lone hunt.

The two lionesses knew the abundant land well. They had both been born there. They had only recently returned after a year in the sparse grazing of the high plateau far to the east. Their prey, the vast herds of zebra, wildebeest and other antelopes that roamed these plentiful, fertile plains, had moved on, forcing Shaha and her daughter to follow in search of food. The herds led them back into the long cold shadow of a barren towering rock that loomed over their long, pain filled memories. Hunger is a powerful force, powerful enough to drive those uncomfortable memories from Shaha for a time at least. All that interested her was a share of her daughter's kill, a kill that still lay some way off. Her thoughts of food suppressed more than just her painful memories. She passed the trunk of a dead tree left to crumble on the savannah floor after a drought many years before. Dulled by her preoccupations rather than her age, her nose failed to detect the faint but distinctive five day old scent of a young male lion.

~oOOo~

Falana called out impatiently over the plain, "This is getting beyond a joke. Mother, where are you?" There was no immediate need for any concern. So far there was no sign that her fresh kill, the gemsbok lying by her hind paws, had yet attracted any of the numerous scavengers that roamed the plains for carrion. The tip of her tail touched the carcass' unnaturally twisted neck. The antelope's last view had been that of the clear morning sky.

A warm drip of blood trickled down the back of the lioness' nearhind leg. She turned her head to look back along her right flank. She saw that blood had begun to well up from the gashes left by her teeth in the gemsbok's neck. It was dripping steadily onto her leg. She dropped and shook her head slowly, closing her eyes as she turned back. She chuffed to herself quietly. She stood square and firm, not stepping forwards nor moving her legs away from the blood that began to congeal in her fur. After a few seconds she raised her head and opened her mouth to roar to her absent mother once more: "Come on! Get a move on! I've waited enough already!"

~oOOo~

"That's from over..." but Nengwalamwe could not match the apparent direction to any ground feature visible against the intense low shafts of early morning sunlight. "Ahh, what does it matter? It's only a lioness." He smiled for a few seconds and then looked at his fore legs and paws. Suddenly he reached down to lick a black spot from the fur of his paw. 'Ah well,' he thought, 'as its wet I might as well just check my mane.' He reached down and licked the back of his leg again, slightly above the paw joint, and turning it over, reached up to the top of his head. He pushed his head forwards while holding his overturned paw steady, running it through the length of his mane. He repeated this four times, leaving a ribbon of depressed clinging hair that he felt sure would soon dry in the sun.

He jumped up and stepped forwards before seeing the back-breakingly sheer to the cracked and shard-strewn base of the rocks below. He blinked and gingerly stepped back a few paces before turning with a jump, launching himself back down the slope to the tantalising rock pile. He gave it a short piercing look and thought as he turned at its foot, 'You've not beaten Nengwalamwe yet. You'll see.' Then he surged away, bounding over the overgrown boulders that lead from the slab of the promontory.

A couple of seconds later he reached clear ground and picking up speed, ran off over the short, browned dry grass towards the source of the roar. It shouted 'food' and, though not quite so insistently, or so Nengwalamwe thought, 'company'.

~oOOo~

When she heard her daughter's impatient call Shaha let her legs and paws walk on for a moment, not wanting to break her rhythm. 'Falana - I'm coming, don't lose your tail.' She looked to where the call had come: a low rise just ahead topped by scattered, grey, weathered stones no bigger than a lioness' paws. It seemed likely that Falana was waiting just out of view beyond the summit. She stopped and looked back, behind and to both sides to check that nothing was following. She was concerned about attracting scavengers and other opportunist feeders.

All around, the savannah lay still as the air filled with threads of steamy mist in the first heat of morning. Her ears pricked and she wondered if she heard, against the incessant haze of morning sounds, the crunch and crackle of heavy padded pawfall some distance behind her. She strained her head against her flank but heard nothing more unusual than the beat of now distant hooves of gemsbok on the hard ground of the plain. 'So that's what she's brought down,' she thought as she turned back and set off up the rise. 'Falana, you're good. You're very good, but don't ever think you know it all girl. Life's too short to go throwing it away.'

As she crested the summit she caught sight of her daughter. The back of her head and her pronounced black spinal line showed plainly in the backlight. Equally plain was the dramatic broken line that showed red down from her shoulder to below her rib cage. Shaha stopped the instant she saw the wound: her kill had not died quietly.

~oOOo~

Detecting a familiar scent on the breath of wind from the rise Falana turned to her mother, trying to show that there was no cause for any alarm.

"And where were you, Mother? I thought you said you were going to stay close? How long did you take to get here, huh?"

"I came as soon as I heard your call. What more do you want? You're too old for me to hold your paw." Shaha's tone softened, "Are you all right?"

"Yeah, I'm fine," replied Falana pointedly.

"That wound looks painful. You had better clean it up, it'll soon go bad."

"Ok, Ok, I'll see to it later, all right? Now then, can we eat now?" She turned to the kill without waiting for a response. She crouched down to break through the kill's hide with her teeth.

"What would you do if I were a lion? You wouldn't turn your back on a lion like that."

Falana paused and chuckled quietly. "I certainly wouldn't crouch down with my back to you like this, that's for sure! Come on; let's eat while it's hot." She crouched lower, turning her head to match the contour of the kill's haunch.

Shaha saw a ripple of discomfort flow through her daughter: her sides heaving as her breath shortened. She knew better than to expect Falana to do anything about the wound for herself, even though it would clearly trouble her for some days. Shaha hoped there would be time during their dozes through the full heat of the day for her to clean it for Falana.

Shaha thought that as the gemsbok had clearly put up strong resistance they had better give it the respect a fallen adversary deserved. Falana brought her instinct to bear on the carcass, opening it over a length of half a metre and began tearing away the flesh of its haunch. Shaha settled beside her daughter, laying full length. She began to sate her gnawing hunger with the warm, bloody flesh.

For a few minutes the pair ate intently. Occasionally Falana pulled her head back sharply, knocking her mother who responded rapidly with a toothy growl or a shove of her foreleg. Shaha felt her daughter's tail slap hard on her hindquarters. She looked behind, raising a hind paw and, when the sting came again, thumped it down. Falana cried out in confused pain.

"Aeeeergh! Get off!"

"Well now girls. Thank you so much for keeping it hot for me; and the gemsbok too."

Falana totally forgot the pain and turned her head sharply to look behind. When she saw from whom the voice had come she tore her tail from beneath her mother's paw and tucked it neatly behind her.

"Which rock did you just crawl out from?" She snapped, "What do you want?"

"I've been here a while or so and I want to make you happy, but first..."

"Get out of here! Come on, move your tail! This is my kill."

The lion stood firm with his head up, his mane flowing with each slow breath.

"Now then, is that any way to treat a lion? Now you two - you had better step aside so that I can share this kill with you."

Falana's ears turned forwards. Her eyes, almost as yellow as the sun, burned into the lion. She had worked hard and suffered for the gemsbok and there was no way she was going to step aside for anyone. Not even for this young and admittedly handsome male lion who must have weighed at least a quarter as much again than she did. She held herself low and, turning her forequarters away from the kill, slid her body tightly round, advancing on the lion who stood close to the top of the rise. The fur rose on her back. With bared her teeth and exposed foreclaws, she closed on the stranger. For a few moments he seemed surprised that she dared to threaten him, and then he began to laugh.

"Oh, so you like to play hard to get, do you lioness? I can play that game too, if you want - but I really think you...," he paused with widening eyes. He grew agitated as Falana, no more than a length from him, stopped and growled fiercely. He shuffled uncomfortably from paw to paw, shaking his mane and twitching his tail. "Err, I think you may be going a little too..." He never managed to finish the sentence. Falana sprang at him with the full force of her forequarters, pushing up irresistibly as her head hit his exposed neck. "ge - eggghft!" choked the lion as the force of Falana's spring threw him up and over violently on to his back. He became disorientated, his eyes desperately trying to find the horizon. The ground shook as he landed heavily on his back, his spine crashing down onto the slope of the rise.

She pulled her foreclaws tight, sending searing, stabbing pains shooting into his shoulder. He gasped for breath as Falana's jaws exerted a sharp pressure on his neck. She scrabbled her heavy clawed rear paws on his hindquarters as she fought for another hold. She felt his heart pounding through his hot fur pressing against her chest. The lion's eyes closed tightly and he froze beneath her. She felt her victim's helplessness and increased the downward pressure with her hind paws.

"No!" He croaked. "I don't…"

Falana pressed again with her off hind.

"No! You win - you can… have it!"

She stared hard at the lion beneath her. His breath, surprisingly sweet, washed over her forehead in short, increasingly shallow pulses. She eased her jaws open and the lion gulped for air. She let his semi-asphyxiated neck drop from her teeth, but she did not let him rise to his paws.

"What do you want?" she scowled.

"I -" he coughed dryly between urgent gasps for air, "I was hungry."

Falana was taken aback. For all the lion's great appearance he was lying helplessly under her claws, she could taste his blood on her teeth and feel his wounded flesh under her claws and what was this? Was he afraid of a lioness?

"I was just," he sniffed sadly, "hungry."

"You want my kill? You want it do you? Do You? Go on, say it!"

The lion blinked at her face, dark against the brightness of the sky, and sniffed again, "Please, may I share your kill?"

She growled loudly and extended her claws a little further into the lion's flesh.

"Falana!" called Shaha firmly.

Falana drew her head up and pulled her off forepaw from the lion's shoulder. She did not look across to her mother but after a moment folded back her ears.

"Falana! Let him alone! Let him get up!"

For a second she remained motionless, weighing up the consequences of her mother's sharp interjection, before lifting herself up slowly from the lion's sprawling mass. As she released him from under her hind paws she swiped at his muzzle with a forepaw. The flash of white and sand across his face brought a whimper and he clamped his eyes tight shut.

"Aaah - you're not worth wasting energy over!"

"Falana!" Shaha growled firmly, "Leave him." She turned to the lion, who seemed fearful of even rolling back over onto his paws. "It's all right. We won't hurt you;" she turned to Falana, "will we?"

Falana growled in vague agreement, padding back in agitation to her mother's side. The lion's eyes asked pleadingly to be allowed to regain some of his dignity and stand up on his four paws again. "Get up - get up." Shaha, almost smiling at him, raised a forepaw with each 'up'.

Falana ignored the stranger and set back about the kill roughly.

Shaha continued, "Who are you and what do want here?"

The lion, still on his back, rocked his paws back and forth in the air twice. The second time he continued the movement, rolling on to his side and, when his paws contacted the ground, right over back onto all fours. Once up, he shook his mane in a vain attempt to clear the dirt and dry grass that betrayed his defeat.

"I'm..." he shook again, "Nengwalamwe; son of Nengwala."

"And?"

"And… I want to eat." He paused for moment then added hurriedly, "Please. If you don't mind that is." He managed something approximating a half-smile. Shaha could see that this was something of an act, probably a deception put on to ingratiate him. There was still a scent of defiance about him. She could also tell he was unlikely to repeat the word 'please'. He looked as though he had lost a battle in a war that had barely begun.

"If you stay there and behave I think there might be something left after we have finished. Yes Falana?"

Falana noisily tore off a great chunk of flesh in an exaggerated fashion as much as to stress to this Nagwalm… or whatever, that she was quite capable of causing him pain. "Yes, well, you just stay there Neng..."

"Nengwalamwe," he said firmly, eyeing Falana suspiciously.

"Ah yes. Nen-gwa-lam-we," said Shaha pre-empting her daughter. She turned away from him and rejoined her daughter at the kill. Both presented their backs to the now silent young lion. The elegant fullness of Falana contrasted sharply with the bony angularity of Shaha whose fur seemed borrowed from some other, rather bigger, lioness.

A short time later Falana felt she had to make sure the lio… no, the cub was behaving himself. She had heard slight sounds of him moving and wondered what he might be up to. She glanced back to see him lying down with his forelegs stretched straight out in front of him towards her. He was looking rather too intently at her hindquarters. She snarled at him angrily, "What do you think you're looking at?" She adjusted her tail to ensure that it continued straight on and down the line of her spine.

The young lion seemed taken by surprise and stood awkwardly and turned, only to lie down again facing up the slope of the rise. Shaha paused and watched her daughter who turned back to the meat complaining and grumbling under her breath, "He's just asking for trouble looking at me like that. It's bad enough he wants my meat, let alone..." She stopped and dropped her head to the kill as she met her mother's gaze. Peace, of sorts, settled over the uneasy trio.

Falana made a point of gorging herself on the gemsbok so that she felt full and bloated. She wondered if this is being a hundred days with cub might feel like, 'Someone remind me never to lie for a lion.' She stood up heavily, pausing for her meal to rearrange itself. 'Ha! He's had to wait for his meat, that's for sure.' She stepped away, feeling uncomfortably unsteady. She turned to the lion, her eyes closed, "Oowh - I won't eat for a week! Mother, are you done yet?"

"Stop that Falana. He's gone."

Falana opened her eyes and stared at the empty space where the lion had been. Neither of them had heard him get up, still less leave. She looked about; lifting her head high over her mother's to get a better view. There was no sign of his flowing mane, his powerful shoulders, his unmarred flank fur or his smooth and flexible tail. Falana rushed as best she could with splayed hindlegs to the top of the rise, her stomach swaying rhythmically beneath her. The effort made a little of the gemsbok catch in the back of her throat. She stood and forced it back down. Then she looked to the now brilliantly lit savannah. For a moment she could see nothing but the herds her mother had passed through before their meal. Then, picked out in the distance by the early morning light, she caught a glimpse of the young lion's back amongst a scattering group of zebra. He was heading for the waterhole.

"At least that's the last we'll see of him," she remarked caustically.

"Falana, I wouldn't be too sure about that. I don't think he's the sort of lion to give up without a fight."

Falana looked back to her mother, closing her eyes, sighing and shaking her head.

"Oh no… that's all I need!"

Author's note:

OK, so I can guess what you might be thinking, "Let's skip to the end to see if any of these get together." I'll save you the trouble: of course they do, but which, and more importantly how? A lot of people appear to skip from here, but there's a lot of great story between here and the end, and its not all about him and her, there's also him, and her, and them, and now and then, and... well why not read it for yourself?