by Marc Secchia
Next she knew, someone was shouting, “Miss! Miss!” And slapping her cheek–hard.
“Ouch! I’m awake! Stop hitting me!”
“God bless ye, miss, I thought the elephants had attacked you!” Shioni sat up gingerly, feeling nauseous. “Easy now, miss. You took a funny turn.”
She muttered that the she-elephant was pregnant. The handler raised an eyebrow. “What? I didn’t know that.”
“And check her right front foot. It’s infected.”
He clucked at the elephant. “Come here, Beauty. Give us your foot. Hup, hup. On the stump.” The elephant responded to his tapping her knee by putting her foot up on a tree stump. He ducked under to take a look. “Nothing here. No, hold on.” He trimmed a bit with his belt-knife, dug around with the point for a minute, and then raised his head to cast Shioni a wary look. “How’d you know about that?”
She had just accused him of neither knowing nor doing his job, she realised. Shioni opened her mouth to apologise, but her stomach chose that moment to heave like a bucking donkey, and her entire breakfast shot out instead.
“Ugh, God!” The handler wiped his foot on the grass. “Aim somewhere else, miss, would you?”
“Sorry!”
Whirling on her heel, Shioni fled the elephant pen as though she had felt that lion breathing down her neck.
She knew one thing for certain. Mama was dead wrong.
Chapter 4: Warriors at Play
Despite her aches and pains, Shioni had to stifle a giggle as she paused in the doorway of the Princess’ bedchamber. Annakiya was sitting in front of her tall bronze-backed mirror, struggling to work a tortoiseshell comb through her long black curls. As her slim brown fingers fought with the tangle, she was grumbling: “Blasted knots,” or “rats’ nest” or “I swear I’ll chop off this bush, I will!” It was quite a battle.
Yesterday it had been talking cats and fainting in the elephant pen. Today, the warriors had taught her a painful lesson. Shioni sighed as she watched her friend. She should help. But her heart hurt even more than her body.
Even the Princess’ white cotton nightshirt was finer than her own rough-cut tunic and leggings. And once Annakiya worked the fragrant hair oil into her troublesome locks, they would tumble down her back like an ebony waterfall. Her own hair was tied in two places with worn leather thongs. Having never been cut, as was traditional for Sheban girls, it fell to her waist. But in comparison to the Princess’ glossy mane, hers looked like straw. Old straw.
Not only that, Shioni thought enviously, but Annakiya was petite and pretty too. She was smart–Hakim Isoke was always saying so, and she gave praise like a grudging miser counting out his last kernels of grain. Annakiya looked and moved and even smelled like a Princess ought to.
The contrast could not be starker. At half a head taller, Shioni felt she looked like a gangly, green-eyed giraffe–all long bony limbs but minus the amazing tongue that could strip the thorniest acacia branch of all its leaves in a second. Annakiya had a pet giraffe back in Takazze, but once it had grown too large, the King had made her donate it to the royal menagerie. But Annakiya still loved the animal and doted on it quite foolishly.
Green, the colour of her jealousy. The colour of a slave-girl’s thoughts towards her owner, which would have more than confirmed Hakim Isoke’s poor opinion of her. Anni, as she liked to nickname her friend, was often subjected to lectures on how to treat her servants, even while those same servants were listening. She always cringed and acted terribly awkward afterwards.
As Shioni limped into the room, her friend spied her in the mirror, gasped, and dropped the comb as though she had scalded her fingers. “You’re hurt! What happened?”
“Weapons practice happened,” Shioni said. “I don’t want to talk about it.”
“You’re bleeding! Your eye! Look at your poor eye!”
At this moment Mama Nomuula came rushing up, which was rather like seeing an avalanche in motion. She swamped Shioni in a rib-bending hug. “Annakiya, what you let her do? By the holy cross–just look at your face!”
“Mama, please. I’m fine, honestly. You smell nice. Have you been baking?”
“And your knees!” She set Shioni down and, gripping her arms firmly, declared, “Them warriors, I’ll tan their backsides like they was snotty-nosed little boys for what they done!”
Annakiya broke in, “The warriors did this?”
“True as chickens lay eggs–I heard it all.” Mama’s face darkened like a thundercloud threatening to unleash a load of hail. “This here’s Captain Dabir’s work, or I’s a bald-headed old vulture. Honey, Shioni, now you just tell Mama Nomuula everything.”
“Well, I went down into the valley for training this morning,” Shioni started. The warriors were strangely cool towards her, she remembered. During the usual hour’s run, she had been tripped up not once, but three times. The first time was on grass–spindly, tan grass to be sure–but the next had sent her over a small boulder. After that, a big brute had taken keen pleasure in knocking her black and blue with his wooden staff. Wrestling training, for strength and agility, was even worse. After being winded by a punch to her chest during one particular clash, she began to struggle to her feet, whereupon the warrior kneed her in the face to finish her off. She had blacked out.
Shioni touched the cut on her cheek gingerly, struggling to hold back the tears filling her eyes. “This man said ‘Here’s your lesson’, Mama, when he hit me with his knee. And afterwards, said he got carried away–but he meant to hurt me, I know he did.”
“It’s that Captain Dabir!” stormed Annakiya. “It’s unfair! I’ll have him reported!”
Mama was dabbing Shioni’s knees with her apron. “Sorry, my cub, I need to get all the dirt out. I’s sorry you got hurt.” Her smile widened. “Problem is you doesn’t give up. I knows you.”
Shioni grimaced. “You do, Mama.”
“Well, there’s brave and there’s foolish.”
“I know, I know. I’m not feeling so brave now.”
“Oh honey! You needs to know when to be brave and when to be sensible. Didn’t you feel something nasty a-coming? No, you’s just more like, ‘I’ll stick my chin out, Mama. I’s stubborn, Mama!’ Am I right or am I right?”
“Right,” said Annakiya. Annoyingly, she looked like she was quite enjoying the dressing-down Shioni was receiving.
“And those men don’t like no fighting back, no sir!” Mama clicked her fingers at the Princess as though she were a lowly slave-girl, rather than the Princess of the realm. “Get me some water, Annakiya, don’t just stand there catching flies! Isn’t that Dabir new?”
“He hasn’t been a Captain long, if that’s what you’re asking, Mama,” said Annakiya, scooping water from a tall storage jar in the corner of the room. “He’s been a warrior long enough. He’s a favourite of my brother’s.”
One of Prince Bekele’s friends? That explained a few things, Shioni thought, shivering.
Mama put her hands on her hips in the way she always did when she was working up some steam. “Don’t make him no good in my eyes! I’d wager you a pebble for the King’s crown, General Getu don’t like him none either.”
“Here’s a wet cloth, Mama.”
“Don’t. Please… ouch! That stings.” Shioni bit her lip. Who had ever thought it a good idea for her to be bodyguard to the Princess? The warriors were all twice her size! Well–no man would be allowed in the Princess’ bedchamber, she knew. And assassins could get there as well as anywhere else.
“I’ll stitch your cheek next,” said Mama, applying the cloth more vigorously than Shioni would have preferred. “Then I’ll stitch up that bully, or my name’s not Mama Nomuula.”
“It’ll just make it worse.”
“Honey, I’ll not have that man–”
“Mama Nomuula, please. He’ll forget. I just want to be an ordinary slave-girl.”
“You’s a stubborn donkey,” grumbled Mama, starting to pick grit out of Shioni’s kneecap with her
fingernail. “But you ain’t no ordinary girl, honey. Ain’t never been. Not to me.”
Mama had no idea, thought Shioni. But, as always, her words were like honey to her heart.
“Are you feeling alright?” Annakiya, who was always sympathetic to aches and hurts, put her hand to Shioni’s forehead. “Hmm, a bit warm.”
“Sunshine and exercise,” said Shioni. She loved her friends’ grumbling and mothering and fussing over her. It was just what she needed after a rotten week.
“Reminds me,” said Mama, taking Shioni’s chin in her hand to keep her from looking anywhere but into her eyes, “you didn’t tell me you vomited all over the elephant pen yesterday. The handler was all in a stir–said you have witch powers. Actually he said you was asmati, one of the little people. Or had an asmati spirit in you. I’s not buying that horse manure from nobody, says I. And he says you found out Beauty was pregnant just by looking at her. You’s left one mighty confused handler in that pen, girl.”
“Well you told me to go talk to them!”
Mama’s eyebrows did their special waggling dance which always made Shioni laugh. “Oh, Mama!”
She related what she thought had happened at the elephant pen. Then, mostly for Annakiya’s benefit, she backtracked to the talking cat, and even further back to the lion’s cave.
Mama gave her another massive hug. “Sure as eggs are eggs, you ain’t no asmati or witch or nothing, girl! Don’t you be worrying about nothing. I knows you since you was knee high to a grasshopper.”
Annakiya put in, “But Mama, it is peculiar, wouldn’t you agree?”
“Well!” said Mama, beaming at them both. Mama could out-beam any sunbeam when she set her mind to it. “I’s gonna dig right to the bottom of this, you’s a-counting on that for sure–or my name’s not Mama Nomuula!”
Shioni looked from one friend to the other. Now, if they knew what she had just decided in the quietness of her heart, they would have locked her in the dungeon and tossed away the key.
She had to go back to the lion. She just… had to.
Chapter 5: Feeding Lions
Shioni hated telling lies. But how else could she have escaped a busy afternoon’s responsibilities, in a castle full of watching eyes and jealous gossips who liked nothing more than to create trouble for a ferengi slave?
So she had ‘borrowed’ an official-looking scroll and an oil lamp, sneaked her pony Star off the picket line, and lied to the camp guard that she was conveying a message to the elders of Ginab Village. Taking her dagger and recurve bow for protection, she set off in the late afternoon. But she had been forced to hide in an acacia thicket for an hour from a Sheban patrol, who were feasting on a walia ibex they must have killed and cooked. Had General Getu caught his warriors shirking their patrol duties like that… she whistled between her teeth. Ouch!
That said, she had better hurry or her rump would be the one being kicked to Takazze and back.
At dusk she surprised a bushbuck drinking at the river and was pleased to bring it down with an intrepid arrow shot. Reasoning that the lion might want something to eat–other than her, hopefully–she put the animal in front of her on Star.
But as the sun sank behind the mountains and the deep shadows of night drew in, Shioni was forced to slow her pace lest she ride off the edge of the trail. She slipped past Ginab Village on foot, leading Star with a hand on her muzzle, and heaved a sigh of relief when the worst noise she heard was the crowing of a crazed rooster who must have mistaken night for morning. Thereafter a full moon rose as if to cast its seal of blessing upon her venture. Shioni mounted up and trotted on eastward, struggling to pick out landmarks on a trail that was six days old and looked utterly different by night. Hours slipped by in endless plodding.
Arguments and counter-arguments had been leaping about in her head like a swarm of river frogs for days now. There was the danger–the utter idiocy, rather–of trying to tend a wounded lion, as her heart demanded. And against that, the memory of feelings and pictures stealing into her mind from elsewhere. The cat. The elephants’ strange behaviour. She kept hopping from one side to the other.
Was it all just intuition? Or a mysterious power?
Either way, she could not have dared tell Mama or Princess Annakiya what she was up to…
Just when her chin was dropping towards her chest, Shioni jerked upright on Star’s back. Here–at last! She recognised the split acacia tree where she had first traced the lion’s spoor. Her mind began to gallop. From the position of the stars, it was around the fourth hour of darkness. She should have been tucked beneath her warm blanket. Instead, she was about to visit a lion in its den. How many ways could one spell ‘stupid’?
Too late now. She dismounted and used a length of rope to tie Star to the split acacia.
“Be good until I return, girl.”
If she returned. She had at best an hour before she would have to start the return journey. Hopefully she could doze a little on Star’s back. Shioni laughed at herself for planning a return that the lion might spoil.
Despite the lucid moonlight, she had to cast around for a few minutes to find the narrow defile that led down to the cave. She paused to light the lamp. It took nine tries because her hands were trembling so much. With the help of the lamplight she deduced that there was no spoor coming back out of the cavern. The lion was probably still lying injured inside, or more likely, dead. But the moist breeze coming out of the cave mouth did not smell of decay. She did not sense anything either–had she expected to?
‘Last chance…’
She must have a bagful of monkey nuts for brains. Dagger in one hand, lantern in the other, and dragging the bushbuck behind her on a rope, Shioni ducked beneath the boulder at the entrance of the lion’s cave.
After a short crawl, Shioni found herself entering a slender cavern that dived steeply underground. Here she had to tread carefully or face a slide into unknown darkness. The lamplight winked off walls glistening with mineral deposits. She found another smear of dried, but not old, blood on one of the rocks. The lion had come this way. Definitely. And unless there was another exit from the cave, he was still in here. With her.
She slipped now and stumbled a few steps down onto a sandy stretch of cavern floor. Her light wobbled crazily. When it steadied she found her gaze riveted upon a tan heap lying just an arm’s length from her right foot. A heap which stirred weakly as her presence came to the great cat’s awareness.
Her breath stopped as though her throat were one of Mama’s gourds she had just corked.
The greatest of cats. Even lying down, the lion was enormous. He could have used her ribs for toothpicks, she thought, had he been well. But a cloying smell rose to her nostrils, the sweetish stench of festering flesh mixed with the pungent odour of a large cat. He was bloodied in a dozen places, his muzzle deeply gouged, and upon his chest he wore a dark stain with the gnawed stump of an arrow protruding from it.
She winced. Now would be a good time to run away. A wise time. Wouldn’t it?
Shioni set the lantern carefully on a nearby rock. Ignoring the little voice whispering in her head about how accurate her daydream had been, she skinned the buck with a practised hand and sliced some meat off its haunches. She waved it near the lion’s nose.
“Come on, you need to eat.”
The black-maned lion was too weak to raise his head. A kind of shiver shook his fur. His breathing… it was shallow, sometimes rapid, sometimes hard to detect.
Her nervous laugh echoed too loudly in the cave. Very well. Who needed fingers anyway? She diced the meat with her dagger. Right. She took hold of his muzzle and pulled back his lip to reveal a set of canines she would have preferred to be behind the bars of a strong metal cage, like in the King’s menagerie in Takazze, and not just about on her lap. She levered his jaw open and began to feed the lion chunk after chunk of meat, poked as far back in his mouth as she dared with her finger. She then massaged his throat to force him to swallow. His fur was surprisingly soft.
She would have thought it coarse, more like cowhide. But this was akin to a bolt of silk Princess Annakiya had once purchased–for an eye-popping sum of money, she remembered. The King had reacted furiously.
She slipped a large dose of Mama’s special healing herbs onto his tongue and helped that down with several more chunks of meat.
Between morsels, she checked the wounds she could see. Most were shallow flesh-wounds, not nearly as worrying as the arrow. That was deadly; the one that would kill him if left to fester.
At some point, she realised one tawny eye was open, watching her carnivorously. Her heart skipped a beat. It skipped several–but he did not sharpen his canines on her flesh. She heard a low sound and realised that the lion was purring. He must know she was helping, Shioni decided, and just as this thought entered her mind, a feeling of gratitude followed on its heels. As if on cue other images poured forth; however, she could make little sense of the flood, and feared she might drown under the barrage. She set her will to deliberately shut the door on whatever her traitorous mind was cooking up.
“I’ll need to cut that arrow out,” she said, as if holding a conversation with a wild lion was an everyday activity. “You won’t bite my hand off, will you?”
The eye drooped shut. Shioni drew several deep breaths into her lungs as she considered the arrow. She was still trembling. The little voice was telling her she had only one life and not to play with it; that his claws were plentiful and sharp; that his canines were the length of her fingers and designed to rip the throats out of animals the lion hunted for. She put both hands on the dagger to keep it steady, and pressed the blade in along the arrow-shaft.
The lion shuddered from mane to paw.
She paused, and as the lion made no further move, let her breath out in a long hiss. She worked the blade about in search of the edge of the arrowhead. Mountain arrows were often barbed, the better to grip in the flesh once an animal was struck. Then she drew the dagger out and made a second, similar cut above the arrowhead.
