nose him awkwardly under his ribs to rouse him. Sleeping whenever, wherever and how often he liked made him feel like a king, just like his father. Yet he felt an emptiness, which for a while he ignored, expecting he’d get used to it in time.

He began returning to the same spot to sleep. It took on his comforting scent and became his private part of the boundless savannah. It was as near as he could get to a place to call ‘home’. Day merged into day, night into night, hunt into hunt, and sleep into sleep as the excitement of his newfound bachelor life wore off. He didn’t have anyone, or anything, to talk to, and at sunset each day he heard no roars of his own kind: no males powerfully proclaiming their ownership of females and territory. The young lion was truly alone.

Nengwalamwe told himself that this mattered little; for the first time in his life he was free. He felt he was especially free of lionesses and all the trouble they had brought upon him. The worst had been Llasani, but she had only the most recent in a long line of lionesses that Nengwalamwe felt had wronged him. Even his mother, Melakwe, the only lioness who had ever really mattered to him, had shown that she did not really understand him. No matter how independent he felt, there were still times when he thought back to happier days. In all those days there was someone else there with him. For fleeting instants he imagined himself lying by his mother’s side with his chin tucked over her foreleg while she licked his head and neck, her soft constant purring filling his ears. He remembered the sound fading and returning repeatedly as she licked down another swath of his fur. He forgave her everything just to feel it again. He was even prepared to forgive his father just to be able to hear his protecting and comforting nightly territorial claims.

As social as lions are, it is eating that is closest to a lion’s mind, while hunting is never far from a lioness’. Though Nengwalamwe wanted to eat, he decreasingly felt inclined to hunt. As such he was a typical lion, and typically a young lion at that. He regarded hunting as someone else’s job. His mother’s in fact, but she wasn’t there for him.

The time comes however, when everyone has to find food for them self, and for Nengwalamwe that time had finally come. Looking around as he woke at sunset, as unsettlingly quiet as the evening before, he noticed the unhurried pace of life around him. Here and there small groups of zebra grazed gently, stopping only to gaze at him for a few seconds before moving quietly on. Around them wildebeest grumbled, grunting across the grass. Birds sat nonchalantly in distant trees, seemingly unworried by anything. Wherever the young lion looked there was prey, prey of every species he had ever imagined – leaping gazelle, snuffling warthog, chirping zebra, twitchy impala, bullish buffalo, dull-boring wildebeest, curve-ridden kudu, all were everywhere. He got up, stretched lazily and walked out, the tip of his tongue poking out slightly between his loosely opened night-black lips. As the lion wandered about the prey eyed him warily, even now unaccustomed to seeing a lion. His form, potential death walking, never filled less than a dozen staring, bewildered eyes.

 In places, and Nengwalamwe visited a lot of places in his wanderings, there was new life, the first faltering steps of newborn wildebeest and zebra: moments so important that failure in them meant a life over almost before it had begun. Once, he idly watched a couple of young male cheetahs, two brothers in coalition probably, hardly to raise a sweat to stifle the breath of a couple of the night’s zebra foals.

All this unfolded around the lion, a spectator on life, as he got to know his ‘kingdom’ as he began to think of it, but a king of what? Life on the rolling plains around him went on as it had for so long before he came. His presence was nothing to the plains, and for the most part to those who lived around him. They knew he wasn’t much of a threat; one of the first lessons all young wildebeest learn is how to tell when a big cat is hunting.

He soon began to think that he had explored most of the thickets, or at least went around them. Climbed most of the kopjes, seen most of the rises and ridges, he’d even ventured fairly close to the river. He felt he knew more than enough about the mountains and forest so didn’t venture anywhere near them. The only place he didn’t explore, or even go anywhere near was the vast sundered rock pinnacle. Somehow it seemed too special for him, somewhere he didn’t deserve to go there. In any case there was no need; he had everything he needed right where he was. When it began to fall down in front of him begging to be eaten, as a baboon seemed to have done, he felt sure that he had found his very own paradise.

The land was stunningly beautiful but as his mother had so often told him: ‘Nengwe dear, you can’t eat the scenery.’ Though it was rich in game of every imaginable species, he longed for just one taste of Gemsbok, ‘Just like mom used to catch.’ They always eluded him. He had always avoided catching large game; he was just too big and clumsy to catch even a calf. Despite his considerable size and strength, he lacked real pace in the chase. He concentrated his few hunting efforts on smaller prey species; often lying in wait for hours for some gazelle or other to stray his way rather than actively stalking. He would sometimes fall asleep in the long grasses only to wake up even more alone than ever. The savannah grazers had quietly moved on while he slept, leaving the plain around him empty. He did not care much when this happened: he had time on his paws. He had all the time under the sun.

Warthogs proved catchable enough, even if they took rather more effort than he’d have preferred to expend. They fought back, which spoilt the hunt. He never quite felt comfortable with eating such filthy animals. They left his lower mane covered in blood, dust and pad sized clods of dried mud. Large kills were too much trouble and he might forget where he left the part-eaten carcass. He was never able to dine twice on a kill that should have fed him for three or more days. Even his well-hidden small kills sometimes moved about. Was it possible that something was stealing his kills while his mane was turned? He had surprisingly little contact with scavengers and less fussy links in the savannah food chain. The few hyena he saw seemed very wary of him and usually ran off when approached. He wondered what had turned the bane of all lions into these timid and frightened creatures. At night he often heard the howling and baying of wild dogs but only once did he ever hear the chatter and yelps of a hyena pack and never the calls of lion.

Life, if dull, was reassuringly secure. His thoughts turned slowly to getting himself a pride with cubs and a few lionesses to look after and to hunt for them, and him

‘Maybe lionesses are not all that bad,’ he thought. ‘So long as they keep their mouths shut and have a kill waiting for me when I get home.’ To Nengwalamwe this was what every lion deserved, none more so than himself of course. His father said it was the lion’s reward for coming along to brighten up the lionesses’ otherwise dull lives. If they dared to step a claw out of line, like some lionesses he had known, then he would put them firmly in their place, just like his father. Nengwalamwe looked forward more and more to persuading a lioness or two to do what he wanted. He often thought about what might have happened after he had left his homeland, Kolata. In his mind he could see the cruelly beautiful Llasani cowering down before his father’s stern gaze. She was begging for his forgiveness. If she were very lucky he would let her off with banishment for bringing him, his son, into disrepute. She might even come looking for her lost Nengwalamwe. She might yet stand in front of him again - a poor, lost little lioness with no friends in the whole world. Nengwalamwe wondered, casually and with little consideration of what it would actually mean, what he would say to her as he denied her of his protection and sent her away:

‘I have no need of your deception and lies. Go now, before I kill you!’

‘But my king, I would do anything if you would only forgive me. Save me! I have nowhere else to go, I have no one else but you.’

‘I cannot be king to you, for you do not respect me nor do you obey my command. Be gone forever from my sight!’

In Nengwalamwe’s dream the distraught lioness, her coat dusty, dull and ragged, her ribs showing beneath her undernourished, tick-ridden flanks, dropped her head in despair. Then she turned and walked away slowly, crying and snivelling.

‘Yeah!’ He congratulated himself. ‘That’s the way to treat an evil little lioness like her! And if she won’t go I’ll just have to persuade her in the only way her type can understand.’

Nengwalamwe woke suddenly. A noise from the grass filtered into his unconscious and brought him cruelly out of sleep. Before the urge to yawn took him he looked about. The stillness of the afternoon was complete. Except for the restless impala down by the river’s edge and the vultures lifting and circling from the tallest acacias, even the upper tips of ancient baobabs were still. The leaves of the trees above him shook. As Nengwalamwe looked up, a brilliantly bright blue and orange bird flapped noisily into the still air and climbed away. The lion yawned and slumped back on to his forelegs, rolling his head to one side to get more comfortable.

He