“I did it! I did it! There’s no way I can stop, this rock’s way too slippery. I had better keep on doing it.”

From five or more places in the fissured rock - Nengwalamwe couldn’t count well enough to be sure - burbled tiny, insistent streams of clear, near-frozen water. The streams slid over the rock, spreading into thin sheets. Where Nengwalamwe stood, the icy film rippled around his paws, condensing beyond into runnels. One by one the runnels joined, gathering into a burbling mountain stream a little below. He watched the stream for a moment, fascinated by its continuous delicate movement. His eyes followed its flow down the mountain, threading its way among the rocks. In places it disappeared from view into gullies, only to reappear a little farther down the mountainside, stronger than before. In the distance it vanished altogether, hidden by a change of slope. Nengwalamwe scanned around and picked up its trace, much bigger now - almost a river - as it disappeared into a green and brown mass that covered the lower slopes like his mane. Beyond the mass, on gentler slopes it reappeared as a shining ribbon, laid out flat on the plains, heading for the distant horizon in a convoluted series of meandering bends and bows. It passed close to the monolithic pinnacle set deep into the plain.

The young lion moved on. For hours he clambered, slipped and lurched down the mountainside from boulder to boulder, always keeping the stream within earshot. The farther he went, the bolder he grew, just as the stream grew stronger. He leapt from one boulder to the next, turning each time before launching himself toward the next.

The lower down the mountain he got, the more the slope lessened. The ground changed from bare rock; first to moss-covered then to a thin, bare soil and now to something approximating earth. Nengwalamwe was not sure which he liked least, all felt unfamiliar and insecure and none would hold the steadying dig of his claws. He grew used to each new sensation after a while, though not before slipping and falling. He was lucky to escape with no more than bruises, but they hardly mattered. Each time he picked himself up he felt his confidence rise. He was the lion who had beaten the void; he was the one who could not be hurt by mere rocks. He was the chosen one.

Other streams joined the flow, adding to the cascade of water. In places the stream dropped suddenly in white falls into narrow dark and dank gullies. Nengwalamwe avoided entering them and jumped, picked, and scrambled his way down the steep slopes on either side. Each gully was larger than the last, each falls more spectacular and dramatic, and each slope more difficult to clamber down. At one point he teetered at the top of a steep bank twice the height of the ledge on which he had spent the night. He peered over, and craned his head out over the edge. He roared: a thin indecisive call that echoed off the rocks around him. He tentatively extended his paw into the space ahead, unsure of how far he would fall if he leapt. He drew it back and sniffed the air and then looked out across the plain to the lower course of the river. A dull green mat stretched out on both banks. He could just make out slow-moving dark spots in large gently shifting clusters. The movement, unhurried and halting looked familiar and raised his hunger; reminding him of the shifting of grazing herds.

Then he remembered that he was the chosen one who could come to no harm. He lowered his forequarters, sliding his near forepaw down the slope. As his chest touched the edge he pulled his other forepaw forward and dropped over. His paws could not grip on the loose scree of shattered rock fragments so he slid down, his tail flailing uncontrollably, his hind paws dragging over the edge and down the slope. His forepaws struck the slope hard but he could not gain any purchase on the loose surface. He tried to run with the fall, to move with rather than fight against it. As the slope tailed off he found himself running at full pace across damp, well-compacted soil covered in tight, low grass interspersed with spongy mosses. Here at last was something approaching familiar ground vegetation. He managed to break his run, bringing himself to a halt just before falling into the next, shallower gully. He looked back; raising his head uncomfortably high. ‘That was lucky… No…’ He had fallen from as high as an elephant’s ear and yet was unscathed, apart, maybe, from a dull ache in his forepaws where his delicate pads had hit the foot of the slope. ‘… It can’t be luck. I’m meant to be doing this - I’m pretty special, ain’t I? Yeah, too right I am!’

Throughout the day the distant plains remained distant, but towards sunset he caught glimpses of the dense green blanket, which seemed to get closer with each leap. He could not quite make out what it was. It was another thing that was unfamiliar, unsettling and dangerous. It seemed to grow out of the mountainside, a rich mass that seemed to flow out of the rock. Nengwalamwe felt he should stay clear of it, but as he got closer he realised that there was no way to avoid it. The stream, now over two lengths wide and elbow deep, plunged into it. If he was to follow the stream any further he was going to have to deal with this unknown.

Later still, as he padded to within a few hundred metres, he saw at last that the green mass was not a blanket. It was nothing more than trees: the canopy of a thick forest that ended abruptly below him. This knowledge did not help the lion much. He was as unsettled by the trees as he had been on the barren open rock. He had seen trees and thickets often enough before. As a cub back in Kolata he had often played around the sparse acacias that littered the slopes down to the Kolata River. Even the thickets had been open and small, often no more than ten sun-dried, wizened trees in all. Here were far more trees, and far denser trees than he had ever encountered. To the lion, the forest seemed endless with dangers lurking in its dark depths. He longed for the security of open grasslands, warm and reassuringly familiar. “Anything could hide in there, lurking. They could wait for days for something to wander past. Am I that ‘something’?”

As the light faded, Nengwalamwe, a fearless beast of the night, entered the upper slopes of forest. He was as frightened as ever he had been as a cub. If the forest had looked dangerous from the outside then it was terrifying when seen from the inside. The trees were not open and spindly as on the plains. They were dense and towering: an overwhelmingly humid, stifling place where the undergrowth crowded round. The trees towered above Nengwalamwe, straight to the sky far above. They smelt heavy and resinous and covered the ground with fine, yielding leaf-litter. Nengwalamwe travelled slowly; afraid of every sound and every subtle swaying shadow cast from the moon. Sounds filled him, unimaginable sounds, unrelenting sounds, sudden sounds and fearful sounds. He could not imagine what kinds of animals make them. Even though the sounds were loud he could not tell from where they came. He imagined the croaks and ripples from tree frogs to be the calls of massive lion-eating beasts. The pips and whistles of bats became mind-penetrating fangs of bloodsucking birds of prey. He froze at every movement of the fallen leaves and branches, waiting to see what horror might burst forth upon him from the undergrowth.

For hours his fear overshadowed his more basic needs. His hunger grew until it consumed him. Now he was not just afraid and bewildered but also hungry and tired. His step became unsteady and his progress through the forest of fear grew slower as his pawfall began to falter.

Nengwalamwe could not sleep in the forest: it felt far too dangerous. He knew that if he slept he would never wake again, but could the forest at least provide him with food? He considered investigating some of the noises, particularly the rustles coming from the undergrowth, in case they came from the hunted rather the hunter. He heard an unhurried movement ahead and a little to his left. He dropped down to the ground, instantly realising that hunting in dense undergrowth required a different technique.

Suddenly the trees around him shook as something massive, dense and black, loomed out at him. The air filled with a rapid hollow knocking as the creature careered toward Nengwalamwe. The lion roared in fear, turned and ran down slope in terror, the ground behind him shaking as the vast creature, taller than a wildebeest, lumbered after him. Nengwalamwe ran and ran, not daring to stop. Not even to check if he was still being chased.

When he eventually stopped, the forest was different: it was more open and not as overwhelmingly hostile. The sounds had changed too, though they were still all unfamiliar. The lion came to the edge of a clearing. He looked around, sniffed, and crept forwards into the open. Something moved ahead. It turned, and looked at him with eyes filled with curiosity. It seemed as though it had never seen a lion before, and appeared to be unsure whether it even needed to run. Nengwalamwe was equally unsure whether this animal, no bigger than a wild dog, was edible. It looked and smelt a bit like prey. When it dropped its head to graze he became convinced that it was crying out to him to take it down.

He advanced, low to the ground. The animal looked up, and eyed Nengwalamwe warily. The lion froze. The animal stepped forward and lowered its head again. Nengwalamwe inched forward, his belly touching the leaf litter. The animal raised its head once again and looked directly at the lion. Suddenly a powerful instinct belatedly flooded it and it ran. Nengwalamwe sprang after it, catching it in four strides and knocking it down with an