A Shining New Era.

 

A short “Pridelands” story by Chris Boyce, 20th February 1997.

 

"Oh no, no, no. This can't be - it's too easy." Immue thought as she closed on her prey, patiently and silently edging forwards through the shoulder high grasses. She not really sure she even believed it herself.

It had been a short dry season, the rains had come early and the mud that so often made the gullies and hollows of the western valley impassable coated her paws making them heavy enough for each slow step to be increasingly uncomfortable as the layer of mud pressed into her pads. She had ventured there, among the crags and mud covered floor of the valley, in pursuit of her favourite prey - warthog. She loved the rich, salty, warm taste of the flesh. She wasn't so keen on the tusks and the trotters as they could gash even her tough skin and deliver a kick strong enough to break the bone below. Larger prey, particularly zebra, was more dangerous still and could break the back of a fully grown lioness with just a single blow.

"If you go in from behind," Akase, the pride's most experienced and successful huntress, had once told her, "go in high and hold on tight." It was sound advice, though Immue had not always heeded it. Akase's next words however, were ones which Immue was to remember for a long time: "If you go in at all, go in to kill."

"Hmmm," Immue said to herself as she parted the grass with her nose, "time to go in." She stopped to watch her unconcerned prey for a few moments. The mandrill sat with his lilac rump showing clearly close to the ground with his knees up close to his age-greyed chest as he picked tiny berries one by one with alternate hands from a low bush. He stuffed them in his mouth and chewed noisily. After a while he looked carefully about the bush for any berries he might have missed but, finding none, grunted disappointedly and dropped his arms to the ground to push himself to his feet. Before he could rise he found himself flung violently to one side into the mud by a massive force bearing down on his back that grew unstoppably until the sky darkened in pain which, though intense, did not last long.

"I do like you Rafiki," Immue said darkly, "I like all mandrills - but I don't think I could eat a whole one." She laughed gently to herself as she bent her head down with open jaws to lightly grip the short neck of her victim. Then she drew her jaws together slowly and deliberately; feeling the strong bones of the ape's neck crack one by one between her teeth. A few unending moments later the elderly mandrill fell still, released from his pain for ever. "I'm sorry my dear, it was simply too easy; yes, yes, yes." She dropped the limp meat into the mud, licking her teeth greedily. "I think I can make an exception for you Rafiki - maybe I can eat a whole one after all." 

The body of her kill slumped over and its eyes stared unseeingly back at Immue. "Oh no!" She exclaimed in dismay, "Perhaps it really was too easy...."

 

      ***

 

"So young Scar," he said as he walked haltingly beside the dark, flame orange cub, "where's your mother this morning? Eh?"

"Oh, I don't know." Scar said vaguely. "Tell me - you give Mufasa all this?"

"What? Your brother all what? You tell Rafiki now."

"All this," repeated Scar scornfully in agitation, "...Where you been?  What you doing? Who you with? All that. You're not MY mother."

"So, why you here eh? Why come and see a mandrill like me?"

"I..." Scar considered, searching for an answer to hide behind. "I want to learn something."

"Eh? Learn - learn what? Magic eh? Want me to turn you into a frog? Is that it?"

"Yuucck!" Scar turned away from Rafiki suddenly. "No way! Anything but that!"

"Ok, what about a mandrill? Like me?"

"Yeah, great! Wow, then I could swing through the trees!" Scar stood up and swayed from side to side, holding his tail high.

"Well now, not so fast, we're talking like me - a mandrill, not a vervet."

"Oh, yeah, Ok."

 There was a long pause in which neither spoke. Scar sat down, patiently at first, but as the time passed he became increasingly restless. Rafiki sat quite still and calm, looking beyond Scar to the

west as if he were searching intently for something. Scar looked intently in turn at Rafiki as the waiting continued and became unbearable.

"Hey - monkey! Am I a mandrill yet?"

Rafiki looked over the cub for a few seconds, "Sure, now there are two of us on the Pridelands. Whatever will your father say now that he has a mandrill for a son?"

"Well - I don't feel like a mandrill. I mean I don't feel all blue or nuffin..."

"Nuffin - Pabbbh? No? You're a young mandrill yet. You won't turn blue for years. Just wait - your time will come. Listen to Rafiki, he knows. The ladies will love you."

"No! Not yet - all that smoochy-smoochy, huggy-huggy stuff - no way am I going to have a lioness, I mean, whatever you mandrills call them." Scar shook his head in an exaggerated and forced way so as to add weight to his words.

"There'll be lots of little Scars one day, you'll see. Strong lads and beautiful lasses, fur as golden as the sunset."

"Hmmm, but I thought mandrills are grey..." Scar said probingly, wondering if he really was a mandrill after all, "and there's no way I'm having cubs." He sat up pushing his chest forwards and holding his head high. "I'll not have any time for that when I'm king."

"But my friend, you cannot be king now."

"What?" Shouted Scar in obvious distress. "Mum says I'm gonna." He rose and turned on Rafiki with bared teeth. "She says I'm gonna be the bestest king ever."

"Going to be the best," corrected Rafiki firmly, "And mandrills can't be king. Only lions can be king. We haven't got the teeth - can't roar. See?"

"Oh!" Scar stopped and stood still. "You're right. Maybe I wanna be a lion again."

"May be. But you can be a lion any time. I'll not turn you into a mandrill again. You see?

Enjoy it while you've got the chance? Eh, my lad?"

"Yeah, I guess so. But hey? Who am I anyway?" In reply Rafiki laughed loudly, jumping back and forth waving his stick in front of the cub.

"You mean you don't know? Why you ARE confused!"

"No, no! Oh..." Scar sat back firmly, he was beginning to tire of the mandrill's cryptic talk. "I mean Scar's not a name for a mandrill, Hmmm?"

"Oh no, right again. It isn't. So, who do you want to be?" Rafiki drew close to the Scar and bent low to look into his eyes from just head's width away. Scar, drawing back instinctively, thought for a few moments before swatting ineffectively at Rafiki with a forepaw. "Eh? You have to be quicker than that if you want to catch a mandrill like us," said Rafiki as he dodged the cub's ill-aimed blow before rushing off. Scar jumped up and followed, surprised by the mandrill's speed and agility. As he ran he felt the stones slip on the soft ground beneath his pads and pushed his claws out a little to grip, they clicked and clattered on the stones as he ran after the leaping and bounding ape. The pair chased each other towards a clump of acacias, their dappled shade proving to be a welcome relief from the burning sun and moist heat of mid morning. The fully grown mandrill proved too fast for the young

cub to catch and in a short time Scar gave up chasing and lay down panting on the floor of the thicket close to a thorny bush as all around him the rustles, whistles and shimmers of the breeze through the trees filled his softly furred ears and deep green eyes. Here the lion cub felt ill at ease and restless in the strangeness of his surroundings which seemed somehow higher than he was used to, the trees rose up around him and filled him with a sense of enclosure that frightened the cub so used to the expanse of the open savannah. The mandrill however was quite at ease in the half-shade of the thinly branched, parasol canopy of the acacias. Here it was Scar who was the weaker animal: the hunter was now the hunted.

  Rafiki stopped and looked back to see the small cub lying, cowering beneath the tree tops. He did not need to think long before he bounded back to sit beside the hunched and tense, dark furred cub. He spoke to Scar quietly and intimately, as a father to an uncertain son. "You can be Makedde, my brother."

"You... have a brother?" said the cub's head that was pressed firmly down to his forepaws, his tightly closed eyes loosening a little.

"Yes, of course! A brother and a cousin. He's coming to see me."

"Your brother?" asked the cub as he dared to open one eye just a little. Rafiki laughed gently as he lay his stick down on his open side.

"No, he's already here - You are here aren't you?" Rafiki did not wait for an answer from the cub who raised his head a little from his paws as he felt the warmth of the mandrill against his side.

"My cousin -  Faraki. He should be here soon you know. He's never seen the Pridelands. No, he'll get a surprise when he gets here. I know, yes, that's it."

"That's what?" asked the cub, his curiosity getting the

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