Go to the writer's section
Copyright Chris Boyce and Dave Morris, 2012.
“...in many ways we have come full circle, we are returning to the beginning. The younger ones have good hearts and they will reach where we are in time. They don’t yet understand but they will....”
Anon.
The Mountains
Part 1. Alone and Free
Part 2. Friends and Enemies
Part 3. Together
Afterword
Some Notes for Lion King Fans
The Mountains
Tiny plants clung resolutely, precariously rockbound in the watery fissures in the freeze-thaw fractured stone. For a few short weeks each year these inmates burst into dramatic flower; vibrant pincushions of bold colour dotting the steep slopes and shadowed gullies above the tree line. It was a short-lived, almost futile attempt to show the inhabitants of the fertile foothills and sun-parched plains below that they too, if only briefly, could bring beauty and colour: a pulse of new life on the otherwise barren mountainside. Yet all their transitory exuberance passed unseen; unnoticed by the busy, bustling world way below their roots. This was a land where everything, plant and animal alike, was small, and clung to the ground trying to avoid being drained of heat and life by the unrelenting wind. Icy blasts tugged and tore at everything that dared to put a whisker or a tendril above the rocks. Yet low down in the rocks and in the air, there was always moisture. Clouds descended to swirl and cling to the peaks and passes of the mountains making the air fresh and cool, worlds away from the stifling oppression of the plains.
This was not the summit of the range; it was not even close to the peaks. They towered far higher still, glistening silver white in the late afternoon sun. This was just a tiny shallow col; a hollow in the mountainside; a staging post to one of the lower passes. Northeast lay the world. Southwest lay miles of frozen wastes: Nowhere. There, claimed by the mountains and absorbed into the green speckled grey rock, lay the bones of those foolish enough to try to pass. No animal had ever returned from beyond, even if there was a beyond. This was the end of the world, the pass led nowhere; a vast unending expanse of void that let nothing escape its frozen tentacles. It drew in and held onto everything: plant, animal, rock, the air; even, some said, day itself. From it came nothing but cold. It even ate the intense heat of the day. On just a few days it drew the clouds together in the frozen gloom, gathering up their venom before sending them sweeping down to the plains below, turning everything to mud and misery.
The end of the world had a purpose; it gave life one moment while taking it back the next. In the void, as hushed voices told in stories at sunset, dwelt the souls of all the animals and plants. In moments of forgetfulness or inattention the void let a few souls escape to be born again. Yet the void would always reclaim some unfortunates to redress the balance, for it must always have just enough souls: the eternal tally.
Soon darkness would clothe the mountain, gathering all into its emptiness. Until then the sun shone deep into the col, seemingly making little effort to deprive the void of cold. One tiny ground-hugging plant grew alone where the ground sloped abruptly. This was almost the edge of its world. It had struggled for months to establish a roothold in the warmer soil, but here was little moisture in the light, free draining soil. It had never flowered and it might have done soon had not a callused, cracked and heavy animal pad crushed it. The paw trembled minutely. The almost white filaments of fur were patchy-stained red but shimmered in the breezeless chill of the late day sun.
The paw did not rise immediately. It pressed down firmly. A heavily muscled foreleg rose from the paw. The powerful flesh tightly wrapped around its central core of bones; skin and fur smoothly enveloping all within. Above the paw the fur darkened, growing darker still above the wrist. A colour even and warm; yet the mountain air chilled the muscles below. The mass of the body was covered by short, hairy fur. At the shoulder and beyond the tufts of dark brown at his elbow, a thick dark grey mass enveloped and hung around the shoulders, neck and chest. Unlike many others of his kind, he spent much of his waking time ensuring it was clean and almost free of the grass, earth and insects that usually dwelt within. Behind stretched the taut, strongly curved, fine-furred body of a young adult male lion with no scars, gained from the rigours of taking a pride, to mar his fur. The curve of his delicately, downy soft underfur rose boldly to his loins. The flesh of his hindquarters was firm, lithe and muscular, covering but not obscuring the strong lines of bone beneath. The shaft of his tail continued the line of his back in a smooth curve to a tip of rich, deep brown that seemed to absorb all the light from around it, creating a dark, warm hole in the day. He embodied the fleeting physical perfection of youth.
For all his vigour, strength and speed, he was not at ease. His ears twitched at the faintest of sounds that floated up from the sunset drenched world below. His eyes were wide with a delicate fear. He seemed to hesitate; to linger, unsure of which was the right path. He sniffed the air, lifting his head to the wind. Ahead and above lay an unknown and feared land of legend and superstition, behind lay the world of pressing danger he had left just hours before.
The wind dropped again. For a time the deathly beauty of the mountain wore a benign face. The daily round of life played out by the specks of motion far below seemed unconnected to the second by second struggles for survival on the mountainside. To the grassland animals below, the mountains were the end of their small world. They formed a barrier so great that any creature that ventured into it was sure never to return, swallowed up by the foothills before they even crossed the tree line onto the open mountainside. The lion, the zebra, the wildebeest and all the animals of the plains, even the birds that over flew the foothills, knew the two worlds had no common ground. Only the eagles that soared alone above the lower slopes of the mountains saw different. They knew no dividing line cut into the earth to separate here from there. The cold mountainside wasteland was the same land as the fertile grazing of the rolling hills and the sun-browned savannah grasslands.
This then, above and below, was all one land and ruled by one; one that never visited or even cared to visit. He did not even know that such a place as this, almost half of his kingdom, existed at all. The eagles were the stewards of the mountains and heeded the calls of their distant king. They governed it wisely in case they were ever called on to account of their guardianship. They imagined the plains where the king roamed were paved with a carpet of small, juicy mammals. None of the solitary eagles dared to cross the boundaries of their territory, even for the promise of such unlimited supplies of food.
On the mountain everything was small, insignificant and under the rock’s control, whether it was the tiniest plants or the mightiest of beasts. So it was, perhaps for the first time in his life, that the young lion felt small and very afraid. Afraid of what may, or indeed may not, have lain ahead. He knew not whether go on towards the unknown or to go back to the familiar, dangerous land below. He repeatedly turned his head back and forth with staring eyes. He knew he could not return, too much had happened for that, but the stories and fears of what lay ahead preyed on him.
His ears caught the deep, rolling remnant of the call of another of his kind floating up from below. Its distant echoes, which flowed from rock to rock, carried an urgency that drove a new sense of purpose into him. He turned his head to face ahead and stared determinedly, his choice made. He sprang forward with a surge from his hindquarters.
Later, the plants that marked the spots where he had stood began to wither, crushed by his pawfall, their brief time was past. The young lion’s life lay ahead. Whatever lay behind, lay in the past. A past he was determined to learn from, a past he was determined to leave behind on the mountainside. His cubhood was finally over; he was now a lion, alone and free. He was running into his future, in which all was as yet dark. Like all nocturnal and semi-nocturnal animals, lions are no strangers to the dark. Most treat it almost like a friend, as this young male tried to feel, but this darkness was different.
He ran boldly as the evening gathered and fell all around him. He ran on, leaping from rock to rock. Yet he soon realised that this darkness was deeper and denser than any he had experienced before. It was cold and clinging and drained his strength and his will. The farther he went, the more his progress became
| 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 | Next page |
19701 visits
Report this fanfic
