by Vered Ehsani
I ignored the suggestive nature of Mr. Timmons’ last comment and instead contemplated making up a story. However, I was not naturally inclined to fibbing, unless required to do so for work or self-preservation. And Mr. Timmons struck me as a person who would detect a lie, given he was so conversant in making them himself.
“As a matter of fact, I’m here to borrow some chloroform. Would you mind, Dr. Cricket?” I smiled at the man, who stared back at me with a bewildered squint. “It’s for some research I’m doing.” I pulled out the gag. “Of course, I’ll need to untie you so you can retrieve it. Shall we say a couple bottles?”
“Of course,” the man said in a faint voice.
“Brilliant,” I said as I began to untie him.
Whoever was controlling the automaton had done me a great service by tying up its creator. With a sense of great urgency, the man scrambled to his feet and pulling out two glass bottles from a cupboard as if his very freedom depended on it, which in fact it did.
Mr. Timmons started to speak, but I waved my walking stick in front of his face, perfectly prepared to smack him with it if he tried to interfere with my plans. “I’m really in a bit of a hurry, Mr. Timmons. I do have a few questions for you. Perhaps we can chat another time?”
“Indeed we shall,” he said and I wasn’t sure if it was a promise or a threat. I was rather surprised he didn’t insist on interrogating me there and then, but I didn’t dwell too long on it.
I grabbed the bottles from Dr. Cricket and hurried away.
When I arrived home, Mrs. Steward was railing on Jonas for letting the zebra eat her marigolds, although what place English marigolds had in East Africa was beyond me. Jonas stood with his hands clasped in front, his head meekly lowered. Whenever she paused for breath, which didn’t happen nearly as often as biological needs should dictate, he would murmur, “Yes, mama,” and “I’ll chase the zebra away, right away, mama.”
“My dear,” Mr. Steward finally interjected over his newspaper, in between a swallow of toast and a sip of tea, “it really isn’t the chap’s fault. That one zebra is a bit of an odd beast…”
As soon as these bold words ushered forth, his wife whipped around, Jonas and his inability to rid the garden of zebras forgotten. “In case you have forgotten, Mr. Steward,” she shrilled with an expression that bode ill for any of us foolish enough to do so, “I wouldn’t have plant marigolds if we’d stayed where we belonged. I told you…”
As the diatribe continued with no sign of let-up, Mr. Steward mushed his face farther into the newspaper, no doubt in the hope that the ink fumes would render him unconscious and erase all recollections of the unfolding scene. It was a noble endeavor, if I do say so, but clearly doomed to failure. His wife’s shrill voice would pierce through a lead curtain.
I’d never been a hard-hearted creature and therefore was tempted to offer him a nip of the chloroform tucked in my bag. That, of course, would beg the potentially awkward question of why I had the substance in my bag in the first place.
Therefore I remained silent on the matter of sleep-inducing substances, and prudently so, for as it turned out, we would need every drop.
Chapter 26
That evening, when all respectable folk were tucked safely into their beds, I found myself astride a horse, and a rather lazy one at that, in the middle of a dark savannah.
“Why is it always at night?” I sighed resignedly as I kicked at Nelly to wake her up. The nag was literally sleepwalking and didn’t so much as twitch when I nudged her on her flank with my walking stick. The small, clear bottles of chloroform sloshed in the saddlebag and a mosquito—how those insects loved me—buzzed teasingly around my head.
Kam, walking ahead through waist-high grass, said nothing. He had returned to his taciturn behavior, studiously paying attention to everything but me. Or perhaps he was so absorbed with all the shadows, sounds, and movements in the great expanse of grass that engulfed us that he didn’t hear me. Nyambura, on the other hand, glanced up at me and smiled, not so much with sympathy but with an eager delight at the adventure.
I glanced back the way we’d come, but the lights of the camp were no longer visible; there was only a band of darkness. I could tell the horizon only because the stars were coating the surface above it, leaving the domain below in the clutch of shadows.
In the expanse of noisy silence, my walking stick seemed woefully inadequate as a protection. I wondered what else lived out here apart from lions and zebras.
I wondered if cinnamon would be effective against these unknown beasts.
“We must leave the horse here,” Kam said while pointing to a solitary thorn tree.
I slipped off and gave instructions while Kam collected the saddlebag. “Now, Nelly, stay here and wait for me.”
I needn’t have bothered. She was already deeply asleep, her soft snores lost in the scratching of grass in the breeze. I left her untied in case something crept out of that green expanse, in the hope she might wake up long enough to outrun it.
I took a sniff. Dry earth, warm grass, horse, zebra, thick musk of lion.
“They’re near,” I whispered, regretting leaving my bow at home. My rationale at the time had seemed perfectly sound: with little light, I was as likely to hit Ooma as another attacking carnivore. Now, I would’ve traded my walking stick and sachet of cinnamon for a quiver of arrows.
Kam, armed only with a long knife and a canvas bag, both tucked into his belt, gestured to me to follow, and we walked. Well, Kam flowed rather than walked through the grass, his passage hardly noticeable. I on the other hand sounded like a herd of demented zebra and I was confident that every lion within a hundred miles knew exactly where I was and how much I weighed. Especially the hungry lions: they definitely knew.
The ground sloped up slightly toward a small stand of thorn trees, their branches creating a canopy silhouetted against the starry sky. A large head rose up from the grass, then another.
Kam dropped into a crouch, an action that he made gracefully. I was somewhat hindered by my skirt and was considerably less graceful in my efforts. Nyambura smiled at my struggles as she effortlessly squatted beside me. I didn’t see the point in hiding. The lions already knew we were there, especially me, of that I was certain.
“What’s the plan?” I asked, assuming there was one as I peered through the grass, only to see more grass, which was infinitely better than seeing more lions.
“Tell me which one she is,” Kam said, his voice no louder than the rustling grass. “Nyambura will distract her while I drop this bag over her head.” He flipped up the rough cloth sack looped through his belt. “You’ll pour the liquid onto the bag and she will sleep.”
“Perhaps I should be more specific,” I said. “What’s the plan that actually has a chance of success?”
He stared at me.
I gaped back, my stomach clenching. I really should’ve asked earlier. “That’s your plan? You’ll sit on the lion and I’ll just stroll up to her and pour chloroform on her head?”
He shrugged nonchalantly, as if this were something they did every day out on the savannah, while Nyambura nodded her head, her smile filling half her face.
“Not stroll,” Nyambura corrected me. “Run.”
“Do you have a better plan?” Kam asked.
“No, but I was hoping you would.” I rubbed a hand over the clubbed fist of my walking stick. I could visualize so many possible ways for this to go so very, very wrong. With that in mind, turning around and going home seemed like a perfectly suitable plan.
“Assuming this works,” I said with a heavy dose of skepticism, “and we’re not all viciously mauled, then what? How are you going to drag a nine-foot-long, sleeping lion to your village?”
Nyambura giggled. “When we sleep, we are human.”
“I see,” I said flatly.
It seemed they had everything covered, except for the fact that this couldn’t possibly work without someone being mortally injured. I narrowed my eyes and refoc
used them. Nyambura’s energy field shone brightly, shifting in and out of a definitely inhuman form. Kam’s markings glowed fiercely against his skin, twirling and twisting, but into what I couldn’t tell. Insects transformed into bits of colored light.
“And when you get her to the village, what will stop her from running away?” I asked.
“A cage,” Kam said in an uncompromising tone.
“Very well,” I continued, since a man who would put his niece in a cage to save her was clearly not a man to trifle with. “Then what…?”
Something coughed off to one side. I closed my eyes against the glare of energy and inhaled the heavy musk of a large feline crouching nearby.
“Please tell me that’s your sister,” I whispered.
“I don’t know, that’s why you’re here,” Nyambura replied cheerfully. “She disguises herself so well and I haven’t spent a lot of time with her as a lion.”
“Of course,” I said, trying to sound understanding and sympathetic instead of sarcastic and irritated. I peeked in the direction of the cough but saw only the energy of a normal lion.
“I’m not sure if this is good or bad news, but it’s not Ooma,” I informed my companions.
Kam frowned. “Bad news. Definitely bad. Don’t make any sudden moves.”
I snorted. “I wasn’t planning on making any moves at all.”
Around the trees, more large forms rose up from the ground and some of them stalked toward us just as a fork of lightning speared the ground and illuminated the scene for me. More lions.
“None of those are your sister,” I said, just then remembering that lions do their hunting at night, which was most inconvenient for us.
“Oh, she hasn’t arrived yet,” Nyambura said, unconcerned by the news.
“You don’t say?” I retorted, now not bothering to sound sympathetic, but sadly my unbridled sarcasm was lost on the others who were unperturbed by the pride of lions approaching us.
To further disturb me, my legs were cramping from squatting so long. My companions weren’t at all concerned about that either, and I wondered if I would be able to move even if I wanted to.
One of the lions roared and that was quite a lot of sound up close, I assure you. I was momentarily stunned and so I didn’t pay much attention to Kam’s statement until he repeated it.
“Horses. It’s the hunt.”
I twisted back toward camp. Silhouetted against the sky were several horses with riders. They had topped a slope in the distance. Something large was running ahead of them, its energy even larger and shifting.
“That’s her,” I announced. “How convenient.”
Nyambura clapped her hands with delight. “My sister!”
A gunshot thundered and the lions surrounding us jumped back. I pursed my lips. “If she gets hit, she’ll turn into a girl, won’t she?”
Nyambura gasped at my words and wailed as if it hadn’t crossed her mind that her sister could ever be touched by a bullet. Kam nodded once, his eyes hard. Another lightning bolt slashed across the sky, seemingly aimed at the hunters.
“That would open up quite an undesirable and inconvenient investigation,” I mused. “Not to mention killing your sister. Or worse, allowing them to capture her alive.”
The ramifications would roll all the way back to Europe, I reflected, possibly exposing the paranormal community and undoing all the devious work of the Society. That could simply not be allowed to happen.
Another gunshot echoed across the land, and our lions scattered, running past the stand of trees and down the other side of the slope.
“Good thing they’re lousy shots,” I said, patting Nyambura’s hand and feeling smug until I reminded myself that the lousy shots were coming in our direction, guns blazing.
Ooma the lion was no more than a shadowy streak cutting through the grass. The horses were rather reluctantly galloping after her, the riders shouting and cursing and emptying the savannah of all wildlife for miles around with their noise.
“I suggest we remove ourselves from the line of fire,” I said, my voice calm. After all, imminent threat of death was no reason at all to lose one’s composure.
“What about Ooma?” Nyambura asked in a resigned tone as she watched her sister race toward the trees.
“If she makes it past here, she will hide by the river bushes,” Kam said as he pulled at her hand. Crouching low, we hurried away from the rapidly approaching hunters and toward the grunts and coughs of the lions.
“Goodness, what a pickle,” I muttered, wondering which was less painful: death by gunshot or by lion’s jaw. I suppose that would depend on where the shot landed. Our prospects seemed bleak, fatal, and most likely painful either way.
Past the thorn trees, the land dipped into a narrow gorge. The slope was thick with small trees and bushes, smells of flowers, and sounds of insects and beasts of various sizes. A river rushed past below us. It sounded and smelled as if the lions were everywhere around us. Of course, that wasn’t possible, but try telling yourself that when you’re scurrying through dark forest at night with lions and poorly aimed gunshots coming at you from all directions.
“Oh, lookie, Miss Knight,” Nyambura cooed. “Aren’t they lovely?” She pointed at two lionesses eyeing us. They looked hungry.
“Yes, very lovely, if you’re longing for death by mauling,” I said, tugging my skirt out of the clutch of a thorny bush and shuddering as I heard the fabric tear. I leaned my hand against a tree to balance myself before pushing off to follow Kam.
The lions retreated into the shadows and I wondered when they would leap onto our unprotected backs. Perhaps I should’ve been more concerned about the bullets flying, for there was an explosion, and a fraction of time after that bang, a bullet tore a chunk of wood off the tree trunk I’d just been supporting myself with.
“Maybe we should let them know we’re here,” I suggested as Kam assisted me down the steep but well-worn animal trail cutting through the bushy slope.
“We won’t have this chance again,” Kam said. “The lions will most definitely move farther from camp after tonight.”
I frowned at him, for while I admire a man who puts his mission ahead of his life, I couldn’t envision a successful outcome to this venture, what with guns blazing on one side and lions roaring on the other. Well, truth be told, the lions weren’t exactly roaring. In fact, they were rather on the quiet side of the roaring spectrum.
They usually were, right before they attacked.
Nyambura was thinking along the same lines, for she said, “The lions, they are very, very quiet,” and her face pinched in a delicate frown at the lack of giant feline noises as she gazed around for the beasts.
“And the horses can’t come down here,” Kam continued his monologue. “So the men, they will have to walk like us.”
“And they’ll still be firing their guns, unlike us,” I reminded him. I then made the monumental mistake of letting go of Kam’s arm while clambering over a cluster of large stones, my walking stick firmly gripped in one hand.
My beautifully polished boots, now dusty, hit the smooth, hard surface at an inconvenient angle and before I could shout, “Good gracious, don’t shoot,” I twisted on a heel, which was fortunately a low and practical heel; otherwise I’d have surely snapped an ankle. As I twisted, I flapped my arms to no avail as flying was not in my repertoire of powers. I tumbled through the air until my backside hit the smooth surface of the steep trail. My journey continued as I rapidly slid backwards through thorny branches to an unseen fate that smelled an awfully lot like the inside of a lion’s mouth.
Just as I started to dig my practical boot heels and my walking stick into the worn, smooth ground, the path took a sharp turn. I unfortunately did not. I dropped a few feet and somehow managed to land headfirst on the scrubby ground of a small clearing.
I dared not move as I lay there on my back, staring up at a few branches and the stars above. By the feel of it, I had cracked my head and anything could fall
out if I turned it too fast. So I remained in a semi-swoon (I wasn’t the fainting sort), the stars fuzzy points shining through blurry branches. I could smell the sharp metal of blood, the dry dust, some sweet night flower, and large felines.
Well, you can’t lie here all night, I told myself. And those lions will only get hungrier.
Carefully, I moved my legs. Fortunately, they seemed to function despite the pain, and this boded well. If at least my legs worked, I needn’t worry too much about the rest. For surely my legs would carry the rest of me, protesting and in pain, to some place where I could seek medical assistance or at least a cushioned horizontal surface on which to suffer comfortably.
I was further reassured by all of this high-level thinking, for it meant that my brain was still firmly lodged inside my skull, regardless of the crack that I felt surely was there. To top off the list of good news, I couldn’t hear any more gunshots, which meant the hunters had decided against blindly shooting into the bush. That, or I had smacked my head so hard as to burst my eardrums and thus wouldn’t have to listen to Mrs. Steward’s rants and raves.
As my limbs all seemed to be in functioning order, I started to push myself up and heard a low, hoarse cough right behind me, which of course could only mean one thing: my ears still worked.
It also suggested that there was a lion crouching in the thicket at my back.
Just as I was pondering my chances of standing up and climbing a nearby tree before the lion pounced, I saw another stroll out of the shadows and into my little clearing. Her mouth was partially open, revealing an impressive array of strong, sharp teeth and a tongue damp with saliva. The beast was probably salivating at the prospects of an easy meal.
Maybe randomly fired guns weren’t so terrible after all.
I began wondering how long I could hold off the lions with my walking stick and a bag of cinnamon. I had come to the conclusion that I wouldn’t last too long, although I would put up an admirable effort, when something came crashing through the brush.
For a hopeful second, I thought it was Kam, bravely (but foolishly) coming to rescue me. Instead, another lion leaped out and loped toward me, no doubt eager for a little bite. The other lions growled and backed away, which was rather strange. Shouldn’t they all be eagerly leaping at me together in hungry unity? I narrowed my eyes and the new lion’s energy field twirled brighter than the others, shifting between human and feline form.
