The Burning Shadow

by Michelle Paver

  The lion cub loved it when her father roared. He made the earth shake and he kept her safe.

  She was especially glad now, because she’d had a bad sleep. In it she was being chased by savage dogs and terrible creatures who ran on two legs like birds, but instead of wings, they had horrible loose flapping hides. It was good to wake up and hear the roars. No two-legged monsters could get her now.

  The lion cub stretched happily. She liked the Dark.

  Then she saw that she was alone. Her father was roaring many walks away, and her mother and the Old One had gone hunting and left her behind. This made the cub extremely cross. Sometimes they let her go too, so that she could learn to hunt—but why couldn’t she go always? She hated being on her own.

  A beetle buzzed past and crashed into a thistle. The cub scrunched it up, but it tasted bad, so she spat it out.

  She padded to her pool and lapped some wet, then splashed about attacking sticks. She stalked a lizard, which escaped, then sneaked up on a frog, which nearly didn’t. She had a scratch at her best scratching tree until her claws felt tingly and strong. Then she climbed the trunk, got stuck, and fell off.

  She yawned.

  Once, she’d had a brother to play with, but a buzzard had snatched him in its talons and flown off. The cub remembered the swish of the great bird’s wings and her brother’s panicky mews. She missed him. It was boring on her own.

  The Dark wore on, and at last the lion cub saw the beloved gray shapes coming through the grass. The Old One was uttering soft greeting grunts, and the cub’s mother was gripping a buck’s neck in her jaws and dragging the carcass between her front legs.

  Eagerly the cub bounded over, nuzzling the full-growns’ faces and mewing: Please please I’m hungry! But her mother was hungry too, and after a hasty cheek-rub, she swatted the cub, who scampered off to her favorite bush to wait her turn.

  Her father arrived, and the females withdrew to let him feed. The lion cub watched respectfully as he ripped open the carcass and gulped great juicy chunks of loin. When his belly was bulging and his chest and chin-fur dark with blood, he shook his enormous mane and ambled off to roar some more.

  Now it was her mother’s turn. The lion cub watched in admiration as she tore off slabs of haunch with her fangs, while the Old One—whose jaws were weaker—chewed the squidgy guts.

  Finally, it was the cub’s turn. Hungrily, she lapped the delicious sticky blood; then the Old One pulled out some of the buck’s fur with her teeth, and the cub attacked the flank. The meat was tough, so she soon gave up and snuggled against her mother to suckle. Milk was easier, and there was always lots.

  By the time she’d finished, the buzzards were circling, so she stayed near the full-growns, where it was safe. She play-hunted the Old One’s tail-tuft, which the sleepy old lioness obligingly twitched from side to side. Then her mother summoned her with a soft ng ng, and she bounded over to be licked.

  Being licked by her mother was the cub’s best thing. She loved the warm mother-smelling breath, and the big strong tongue rasping dirt and tiny itchy creatures out of her fur. Most of all, she loved that she had her mother to herself.

  The cub’s mother was the strongest lioness ever, and so good at hunting that she easily killed enough prey to feed the whole pride. Her great watchful eyes shone golden in the Light and silver in the Dark; and with one swat of her paw she could fell a buck, or nudge a hungry cub to suckle.

  When the licking was over, the cub curled up between her mother’s forepaws. Her belly was full, and her fur was sleek and clean.

  Everything (except the buzzards) existed to keep her happy and safe. The pool was there to be played in, the frogs and lizards to be stalked, and the bushes to provide places to hide. Her mother and the Old One were there to give her milk and meat, to keep her clean, and to pull thorns from her pads with their teeth. Her father was there to protect her from bad things.

  No two-legged creatures with flapping hides could ever get near her.

  The Dark became the Light, and the Great Lion in the Up changed color. Like all lions, He was silver in the Dark, but when the Light came, He turned gold. Now His mane shone so bright that it hurt to look.

  The cub loved the Light, when the whole pride snoozed together, but this time she couldn’t sleep. Her belly felt crawly, as if she’d been eating ants.

  Suddenly her mother leaped to her feet with a whuff of alarm. The Old One rose too, and both stared tensely into the wind.

  Anxiously, the cub rubbed against their legs. They ignored her.

  Far away, her father roared. Then he stopped. Usually he went on much longer.

  Whuff! grunted her mother. She and the Old One turned tail and raced off, with the cub bounding after them. This wasn’t a hunt. Her mother smelled of fear.

  Struggling to keep up, the lion cub followed their black tail-tufts through the long grass and into the prickly thickets on the Mountainside.

  Far behind, she heard barking. The savage dogs had escaped from her bad sleep and were coming after her.

  Then she heard a strange yowling noise. No no, the terrible two-legged creatures with the flapping hides were after her too—and now she remembered: These creatures were men.

  Until now, she’d never been scared of men. They were just puny, timid creatures who sometimes ventured into the lions’ range and left them a goat.

  But these men were different. Her mother was afraid of them.

  Tirelessly, her mother and the Old One ran, and the cub labored after them.

  This part of the Mountain was the heart of their range, and she knew it like the spots on her paws. She knew the black slopes where the earth was growly and hot. She knew the pools of talking mud and the hissing cracks higher up, where the fire spirits lived. Surely here they would be safe?

  As they climbed a ridge, she glanced back. A long way below, she saw huge angry dogs and men with long black manes and flapping hides. The men were waving big shiny claws in their forepaws—and they were attacking her father.

  A dog lunged at him and he bared his fangs, lashing out with his claws and sending it crashing into a rock. But more dogs were snapping at his haunches and the men were closing in. How could this be happening? Lions aren’t prey. This was all wrong.

  An urgent whuff from her mother—wait!—then she and the Old One went hurtling back down the slope, to help him.

  Obediently, the cub hid under some thistles and made herself very small and still, as she’d been taught.

  At last her mother reappeared and whiffled to her to follow. The cub saw with horror that she was panting and dragging one hind leg, and her belly was dark with blood. It wasn’t the blood of prey. It was hers.

  They ran for a long time, to a part of the forest that the cub didn’t know.

  Why didn’t the Old One come?

  And where was her father?

  When the lion cub woke, it was the Dark again. Her paw pads hurt and she was hungry.

  Above her in a pine tree, an owl peered down at her, then spread its wings and flew away.

  The cub didn’t know this place. The tree smelled of her father, but the scent-marking was old: He hadn’t been here for a long time.

  There was no sign of him or the Old One, but a couple of pounces away, her mother lay asleep among some bushes. With a grateful mew, the cub limped over to suckle.

  She drew back in alarm. Her mother’s teat was cold—and no milk came.

  Cautiously, the cub crept nearer and patted her mother’s nose.

  She didn’t wake up. Her eyes were open and staring, but they weren’t the shining silver they should be in the Dark. They were dull—and they didn’t see the cub.

  Mewing with fear, the cub squirmed under her mother’s paw and tried to make her move.

  It didn’t work. The great watchful eyes went on staring at nothing.

  Franti
cally, the cub batted her mother’s face with her forepaws. She nose-nudged her mother’s flank, she licked the big gentle muzzle. Please please please!

  Still nothing. The lioness who lay sprawled in the bushes looked like her mother, and smelled like her—but all the warmth and the meaty-smelling breath—all the motherness was gone.

  The cub put up her muzzle and yowled. Come back, come back.

  Her yowls sounded loud in the stillness, and horribly alone.

  Trembling, she crept beneath a thornbush.

  Maybe if she kept very quiet, and waited like a good cub, her mother would wake up.

  5

  Sometimes, Pirra thought her mother never slept.

  When the High Priestess wasn’t making a sacrifice or dealing with her priests, she was listening to the voice of the Goddess; and always the lamp in her chambers burned like an all-seeing eye.

  If you wanted to escape, you had to think fast and grab your chance. Pirra knew that. But now things seemed to be going wrong.

  There should have been a rope ladder hanging from the wall. It had been there yesterday—she’d seen a slave climbing over the edge to repair the outer face of the House of the Goddess—but today there was only a crow and a thirty-cubit drop.

  From the Great Court, she caught the distant smells of juniper smoke and roasting swordfish, then a roar from the crowd: The bull-leaping was about to begin. The crow flew off with a startled croak, and Pirra crouched behind one of the huge limestone bull’s horns that lent the top of the wall its spiky grandeur.

  It had rained in the night, and the horn felt slippery and cold. With a scowl, Pirra pondered her next move. This was beginning to look like a mistake.

  And yet it had begun so well. She’d been pushing through the throng on her way to the Great Court when she’d become separated from her slaves. She’d seized her chance and fled.

  The storeroom had been shadowy and deserted: a long way from the Feast, and heady with fumes from its man-high jars of wine. Pirra had scrambled up one, then through a repair hatch, and onto the roof. It was flat-trodden clay limed a dazzling white, and beyond it lay more roofs: a whole shining hillside of shrines, cookhouses, chambers, smithies, and workshops. Her vast stone prison.

  Keeping low, she’d raced over them till she’d reached the edge of the westernmost roof. Between her and the outer wall lay a gap: a passageway without a roof. She’d jumped it, thudding onto the outer wall and grabbing one of the bull’s horns.

  That was when she’d realized that the ladder was gone.

  Now what to do? Behind her, a nasty fall to the passage. Before her, that thirty-cubit drop, then a jumble of rocks leading down to the settlement, whose mudbrick houses huddled against the great House like calves against a cow. Beyond them—freedom.

  Because of the Feast, the settlement was deserted, except for a magpie hopping about on the rocks. Perfect. But how to get down without a ladder?

  Hooking one arm around the bull’s horn, Pirra leaned over. She spotted a window in the wall directly below her. If she leaned a bit farther, maybe . . .

  A familiar voice shouted her name.

  She glanced over her shoulder.

  Userref her slave stood in the passage, frozen with horror.

  “Pirra what are you doing?”

  Furiously, she motioned him to silence, then turned back to plan her escape.

  Down on the rocks, the magpie was gone. In its place stood a woman with unkempt brown hair and a startling white streak at one temple. Her tunic was ragged and dusty, but she was staring sternly up at Pirra.

  Pirra recoiled, slipped, and suddenly she was clinging to the horn and her legs were dangling over the passage. Her sandals scrabbled for a foothold, but the wall’s polished gypsum was lethally smooth.

  “Hold on!” cried Userref. “I’m beneath you now, let go, I’ll catch you!”

  Pirra struggled to heave herself back onto the wall. She couldn’t.

  “Pirra! Let go!”

  She clenched her teeth.

  She let go.

  “This has to stop,” hissed Userref as he marched her back to her chambers. “Think of the trouble if the Great One found out!”

  “Trouble?” retorted Pirra. “How much worse can it get? In three days she’s sending me to the edge of the world to wed a stranger!”

  “It’s your duty—”

  “Duty!” she snarled.

  They reached her room and she flung herself onto her bed and plucked savagely at the covering. It was fine red wool embroidered with blue swallows, and it smelled of lampsmoke and captivity.

  “Yes, duty,” insisted Userref. “Your mother is High Priestess Yassassara. Everything she does is—”

  “For the good of Keftiu, yes I know. Last year she tried to barter me for a shipload of copper. This year it’s tin. All for the good of Keftiu.” She was nearly thirteen, and she’d spent her whole life shut up in the House of the Goddess. In three days, she’d be sent far across the Sea and shut up again, in a stranger’s stronghold, until she died.

  Userref was pacing angrily up and down. “These ridiculous attempts to escape! Bribing a water-carrier. Hiding in an empty olive jar. Clinging to the webbing under a chariot!”

  Savagely, Pirra attacked another embroidered swallow. Userref made it sound so childish; and he hadn’t even mentioned her preparations for surviving in the wild. Haunting the cookhouse to learn how to gut fish. Hoisting her big alabaster lamp over and over, to make herself stronger. Stomping barefoot on a pile of oyster shells to toughen her feet. She’d even bribed a guard to teach her about horses . . .

  For what?

  Her one success had been preventing her mother from marrying her off to a Makedonian Chieftain. Pirra had greeted his emissary smeared in donkey dung, with a crazy grin and the scar on her cheek picked out in henna. Her mother had punished her by forbidding a fire in her room all winter, and—which was much worse—by giving Userref twenty lashes.

  “Why can’t you accept your fate?” cried Userref. “Why can’t you be content with what you have?”

  Pirra glanced about her, and the familiar panic sucked the air from her lungs. The cedarwood roof beams weighed down on her and the windowless walls pressed in on all sides. The green stone floor was cold as a tomb, and the broad-shouldered columns flanking the doorway looked like tall men standing guard.

  “None of it’s real,” she muttered.

  He flung up his arms. “What does that mean?”

  “This lily in my hair isn’t a flower, it’s just a piece of beaten gold. The octopus on that jug is made of clay. Those dolphins on the wall are painted plaster. They’re not even proper dolphins, the painter got their noses wrong, he made them look like ducks. I bet he’s never seen a real dolphin. I bet he never . . .” She broke off.

  I bet he never stroked its flank, she thought. Or held on to its fin and let it carry you out to Sea, while Hylas stood in the shallows and . . .

  Thinking of Hylas made her feel even worse. For a few days last summer, she’d escaped from Keftiu and he’d been her friend. Well, sort of her friend, although they’d fought a lot. At times she’d been hungry and terrified out of her wits—but she’d been free.

  “You’re thinking about that barbarian,” Userref said accusingly.

  “His name is Hylas,” snapped Pirra.

  “A goatherd.” He shuddered. Like all Egyptians, he regarded goats as unclean. “Is that why you never wear that lion claw I gave you?”

  “He gave me a falcon feather, so I’m keeping the claw for him, it’s only fair.”

  “But you’ll never see him again—”

  “You don’t know that—”

  “—and I got that claw for you, to keep you safe.”

  “I don’t want to be safe!” she shouted.

  “Well then, the next time you decide to da
ngle from the roof, I won’t catch you, and you can break your legs!”

  Pirra grabbed her pillow and flumped onto her side.

  There was a furious silence.

  Userref sat cross-legged on the floor beside the incense burner and tented his kilt over his knees. Frowning, he straightened the pleats in the linen. He centered the eye amulet on his chest and passed a hand over his smooth-shaven brown scalp. His fingers were shaking. He hated losing his temper. He said it was an offense against maat, the divine order of his animal-headed gods.

  Beneath her pillow, Pirra touched the little wooden cat he’d carved for her when she was eight. It was yellow with black spots, he called it a “leopard,” and you could make its jaws open and shut by pulling a thong in its belly. She was too old for it, but she loved it so much that when her mother had ordered all her playthings taken away three summers ago, she’d hidden it in the secret hollow under her clothes chest.

  “It would be so much easier,” said Userref quietly, “if you simply accepted your fate.”

  “Like you? You told me once that to live outside Egypt is to be only half alive.”

  He sighed. “Better half alive than dead. Your mother won’t pardon you again. You know that.”

  His handsome face was severe, but as he spoke, he was stoking the incense burner with his special blend of iris, terebinth gum, and snakeskin—which he said helped shed sorrows as a snake sloughs off its skin.

  Pirra’s eyes stung. Userref was more like an older brother than a slave, but in some ways, they would always be apart. He missed Egypt so much that he shaved his head in mourning, and his greatest fear was that he would die in a foreign land, because then he wouldn’t meet his parents and brother in the afterlife. And yet he’d never once tried to escape. His gods had decreed that he would be a slave on Keftiu, and he must obey their will.

  The heady fragrance of incense stole through the chamber. Userref met her eyes and smiled. “I’ll be with you in Arzawa,” he said. “I’ll look after you. I always do.” As he spoke, he gripped his eye amulet. Pirra knew this was his way of taking an oath.