there?”

Nengwalamwe’s mouth hung slack, speechless at her outburst. “Mother!”

“Don’t you dare ‘Mother’ me and look all teary eyed. You’re long past a cuffing, and there’s no time for all this self pity you seem to enjoy so much.” Lowering her voice, she nosed his cheek gently. “Nengwe, my son… I do love you. But you’ve got a paw on both sides of a stream, and you have to cross it or let the crocodiles take you. There’s a life for you here. You may yet be a lion, but you weren’t born to it you know. There’s a part of you deep down that can rise above all you inherited from your father, it has to. As I told you before, I can’t help you do it, and I can’t make you do it, but I can ask you to do it - to make your whole life worthwhile. To do the right thing.”

Trembling, he looked up, his jaw tight. “But Mother, what do I have to do?”

Her eyes bored into his, seeming to swallow him. “There is so much still be done, so much. Just remember this: the river runs deep where the rocks are dry.”

“W-What?”

Melakwe backed away from him. “Remember who your friends are, they are not your enemies, and rulers only rule as long as their people want them to. It’s time to go home now; you’ve been living a daydream Nengwe. It’s time to wake up.”

“What did you mean about the rocks? Which dry rocks? The rocks covering the cave? Those rocks?” He moved to follow her, but she retreated faster than he could follow. “Mother, WAIT!”

“It’s time to wake up, Nengwe.”

Sharp late afternoon light stabbed into his eyes, making them water and blink. He looked up into the green canopy overhead, dusty motes dancing in their own world as the sun slid down towards the horizon. He drew back, blinking frantically, as something warm and full into his eye. Lifting his head again, Nengwalamwe looked about rapidly, feeling one, then another and another of the drops land on the exposed fur of his back and hindquarters.

He propped himself on his forelegs and stared about. His muscles complained with the dull ache of limbs that have been overtaxed and then left unused for some hours. The ground about him was disturbed; stirred up all round save where he had been lying. The clearing about him was empty. No trace of a pawprint or scent broke the isolation about him, and the only sounds were the dull huff of his breathing, the steady throb of his own heart and the pat-pat of drops falling on to the dust.

Lowering his head to his paws, Nengwalamwe sobbed. A hot flood of tears drenching the fur under his eyes, a bitter current that carried the remnants of his old life with it. His tears flowed down and into the dust to join that which flowing from above. The lion cried, and the land cried with him. The noise of the savannah was gone, held down by the clouds that sailed overhead and in a lion’s heart. The plains stood still for a moment, joining with the young lion to mourn a dead world that had forever passed beyond his reach.

***

The evening sun, so shrouded by clouds that one might have mistaken it for the moon, moved onwards in its timeless path across the sky. The lion and baboon below it moved almost as slowly, though their strides were no less of purpose. The rain fell evenly now. Dusty witheredness transformed to muddy slipperiness with every drop that fell. Nothing was dry, not even the underfur of a lion.

The lion and baboon had recently climbed out of a shallow gully. Out of its sheltered pungent greenness, the land opened up on either side. The towering growths of trees giving way to stubbier clumps of brush and occasional patches of low grass, neither of which was tall enough to hide what lay beyond. Only the rain, falling incessantly, could do that.

The river was here as well but, compared to the small watercourse they had encountered upstream, one might as well call the ocean a puddle. This was not a placid course that burbled by smoothly, inviting one to dip one’s paws in for a moment of refreshment. Here the river was a living being unto itself, ever churning and growling, fleeting past and winking continuously with the silver light of the moon. Here and there, a rock gleamed in the torrent, glimmering bone white as the river frothed and spumed about them, wearing at them with a timeless patience as it always had. The beast was smug in its assurance that one day it would reclaim the stony intruders that had dared disrupt its course, and the beast was stirring….

The sand beneath feet and paws gave way to coarse gravel, increasing in size until lion and baboon found themselves picking their way across rocks and stones, each footfall carefully placed in deference to the sharp edged ancient granite. Nengwalamwe heard, and chose to ignore, Mtundu’s quiet cursing as he sought to find an easier path amongst the rubble. Nengwalamwe’s size and vastly greater strength enabled him to wend his way about easily enough, leaping from stone to stone. His keen eyesight, practised during his arduous trip through the dark mountains, was able to pick out rocks which could be trusted; of which there were precious few. The majority were unsafe; their uneven surfaces glimmering in the evening light with the sheen of mist the river had thrown upon them. Their odd angles and sharp edges ready to slice open a paw or send the perpetrator of ill-aimed leap tumbling into more dangerous stones below.

Nengwalamwe finally slowed, then stopped with his eyes furrowed and ears laid back against the misty froth that continually hung in the air. The damp droplets clung eagerly to his mane and whiskers, slicking the fur down; what there was left of it. Ahead the ground rose in a precipitous wall jutting out into the river. The flow, broken in its rush downstream, surged angrily back from the wall to pool around the rocks at his paws. He switched his tail agitatedly for a moment, displaying his uncertainty to the baboon who fought his way to the lion’s side.

“Eh? An’ now what do we do, eh? Ain’t no way we’re swimmin’ across that mess. What’d you bring us here for, anyway? There’s nothin’ out this way I ever heard of, except more nothin’. Pfagh.” The ape spat into the current, then looked up at the lion inquiringly. “’Less ya got some bright idea you ain’t told me about yet?”

Nengwalamwe remained silent, surveying the current below his paws. The dirty brown-grey water rushed past him, striated here and there with white froth from fighting its way over the submerged rocks.

Though naïve in many ways, Nengwalamwe was relatively educated in a few things; being Nengwala’s eldest son had procured some advantages. One of which was an occasional trip down to the lower reaches of the Kolata River. Though that watercourse had been far shallower and quite calm on those excursions than that which he faced now. His father was not the best of teachers nor even the best of company at times, but the young Nengwalamwe had relished these trips nevertheless; they were the only times that he and his father had had to themselves.

“Suppose you had to chase an intruder out of the Kolata. He’s across the river from you now, but that doesn’t mean your job is done,” the older lion had scowled to his son, “You have to finish the job… never leave a task undone boy.”

Nengwalamwe nodded sagely, the sparse beginnings of his mane beginning to show some of their coming glory. “I’m seeing it. Now what?”

“You have to cross over and get to him, of course.” Nengwala lifted a paw, splashing a spray of water into the air. “Water has no muscle, no sinew to tear, but has heart and it will bear you away like a lioness carries a cub in her mouth if you don’t be careful. Where do you cross boy?”

Young Nengwalamwe looked at the watercourse before him carefully then pointed with a jab of his muzzle. “Right there.”

“Why?”

“Well, the water’s slower there… it’s easier to swim.”

Nengwala growled, pacing over to loom before the suddenly frightened adolescent. “You fool. The water’s slower because there’s nothing for it to fight. It’s deeper than you can stand, and you’ll be carried off and become fodder for crocodiles as your intruder sniffs up your lionesses, like as not.”

Nengwalamwe nodded, trembling. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be sorry, be right!” Nengwala’s eyes bored into him. “I’ll not lose my eldest over such a trivial matter like this. If you have to die; die fighting, not swallowing water and pulling for your mother’s breast like a cub.” He jabbed an exclamatory paw towards a dry, sandy area nearby. “There, where the current is swift and shallow. There’s ground below the water’s surface, just within paw touch. You can walk across, and have footing if you need to dodge anything.” The lion swept a paw about. “Always look for the fast water. If you get in a tight spot, you can cross on the rocks.” An appraising eye looked the youngster up and down. “If you’re agile enough… which you aren’t, boy… let’s work on that now. Go hunt up your mother and tell her you need a wrestling partner.”

Nengwalamwe nodded, and was about to lope off when a thought struck him. “I’ve already got Tashi.”

“What? That excuse for aardvark? He’ll never be any use to you