pressing hard onto her shoulder. He relieved the pressure on her yielding but tense fur. He felt her heart pounding. Now freed, his forepaw slid down her leg and stopped on the ground by her side. He pushed down on it again and lifted his great weight from her back.

Instead of rising up and pulling herself from underneath his belly she pressed herself down further to the ground, flattening her hindquarters so that she lay square on the ground. She panted strongly. Nengwe felt the warmth of her flesh on his and asked gently:

“Do you really want this with me?”

For a moment she said nothing, their hearts pounding as one. Then she extended her hindlegs powerfully, forcing her hindquarters back, beneath his body. “Yes Nengwe, it’s what I wished for.”

He curved his back down, the skin on his sides rippling as he felt her offering herself to him. She pushed back again… his instincts took over.

He cried out in a roar as he held his teeth open over Falana’s neck. Underneath he felt her hold onto him. Falana closed her eyes as his power closed all around her. She knew the moment couldn’t last and let out all her flesh ripping tensions of years with her mother in one long ear piercing roar as she felt an intense heat of inner strength flood over her. She saw and heard nothing as a loud silence and an intense red blackness overtook her.

When she next saw light she could no longer feel Nengwe’s belly rubbing her back, she felt disorientated and lost. She whipped herself up from the ground and lurched over to find him. She rolled onto her back desperately hoping to catch a touch of the one who had just given her such a wonderful gift. Her right hind paw caught a nose. As she pulled her leg away, she felt the overheated panting breath of a lion who then licked the blood from his nose; his breath coming back in sharp lung-filling gasps.

 “Are you all right Falana? I’m sorry I didn’t mean for that to happen, I just...”

“Shuusssh, it’s just how I wanted it to happen,” she said looking at him with her hair-hung chin pressed to the underside of her neck. “Didn’t you want it too?”

“I’ve wanted it forever. I wished for it too. It’s what I was born for: for you.”

Later, in the cave with some of the gemsbok to sustain them, Nengwe’s thoughts turned to lighter things.

 “I do wish you wouldn’t do that claw thing Falana. Why do you keep on trying to claw me?”

“Nengwe”, said Falana laughing as she rolled on her back in front of him, “Do you think a lioness is going to reveal all her secrets at once?” He didn’t understand, but smiled at Falana just the same. “But as you ask I’ll tell you: It’s to keep you on your pads. We lionesses can’t have you lions dropping off on us can we?”

“I really don’t know what you mean.” Nengwe took a playful swipe at her forelegs as they swing by again. He suddenly grew serious. “Falana, promise me you’ll save yourself and… if…” He couldn’t get the words out. He sighed deeply.

“Don’t Nengwe. Forget about all that: leave it out there on the plains. We’re here now, that’s all that matters. We can hunt tomorrow.”

Later the following morning, unknown and unfelt by either, their gifts, so freely given and passionately received and enjoyed as one, became so powerful as to draw forth not one but two souls from the void. Their gifts had become the most precious of all: of life itself. Yet the void does not give out its souls easily. As it gives, so it’s cold, dark fingers reach out and take back. This day the void was in no hurry, unlike the lions. The void could wait, and so it left the two together, their time was not over. Their sun was not set, even though in the cave new days were dawning.

 

 

22.High Moon

 

Shaha lay dozing quietly on the ridge above Silent Rocks in the humid heat of the midmorning. She had had a busy few days with Mtundu. Now at last alone, she was trying to sleep. She couldn’t settle: rolling over and back repeatedly. She tried every position of her legs and paws but none helped to ease her discomfort in the searing shade of the breezeless morning.

Shaha looked up, she noticed Falana moving amid the shadows of a clump of trees. She was heading for the river. Some way behind her, the grass moved again. She was being followed. Shaha felt warm at the thought that it was most likely Nengwalamwe. She savoured this time, borrowed as it was, for now Falana would surely spend more and more time with him.

At length Shaha found a passably comfortable position for her forelegs. She closed her eyes to sleep, ignoring the flies that swirled around her head.         

“Shaha?”

She woke instantly and looked up.

“What do you want Mtundu? I’ve been trying to sleep for hours.” She struggled to focus beyond the baboon.

“It’s late Shaha. You have been asleep for hours. No tryin’ about it.”

She passed a forepaw over her forehead.

“I must be getting old. A baboon wakes me and I don’t even want to kill him.”

“Yeah? An’ now I know where Falana gets her grump.”

Shaha forced open her eyelids, blinked and raised her head from her foreleg. “You know…”

“Yeah, if baboons tasted better and you were ten years younger you might do sumtin’ about me.”

“…Something like that, yes. While you’ve been gone sorting your family, I’ve found something for you, and by the way how is your father?”

“For me? You got sumtin’ for me?”

Shaha turned her head slowly. Mtundu followed her gaze. A first he had no idea what it was he was supposed to be looking at.

“What?”

“That.”

“Eh? Cummon Shaha, stop funnin’ me.”

“There at the foot of that rock.”

Mtundu scurried over. He looked about and then turned back to Shaha, shrugging; raising both his hand above his shoulders.

“Beside you.”

He began to raise his upper lip, but before he had exposed anymore than the tips of his teeth he saw a gnarled branch, bark-stripped and smoothed with age lying on the ground.

“What? That old branch?”

“Yes Mtundu. That “old branch”. Pick it up.”

“How? More to the point why?”

“You’ll see.”

“OK, OK, seein’ as it’s you.” He looked at it. It was half as long again as he was tall. Far from straight, it kinked near its thicker end. Mtundu sat over it and put his open hand over it where it bowed away from the ground. He felt something flow through him, a rushing force. He jumped back, pulling his hand away, startled. He looked to Shaha as he composed himself.

“What the heck was that?”

“It won’t bite, but I might if you don’t try again.”

He breathed quickly.

“What is it?”

“It’s just a stick Mtundu. That’s all. All you felt were memories.”

“Yeah, memories they might have been, but they sure as heck weren’t mine.”

“No, that they were not Mtundu. It’s yet to see yours.”

“Are any yours?”

“Oh yes, it knows all my secrets. Go on now, pick it up again. This time remember it’s yours, so hold it as if you mean it. You control it, use it as you need.”

Mtundu side-shuffled to the stick: it still lay as before. He looked at Shaha, raising his eyebrows. She nodded, tipping her nose toward him, urging him forward.

“’As I need,’ what’s that supposed to mean?”

Shaha flicked her off forepaw at him… twice.

Mtundu thought. His hand hovered over the bow of the stick. Birds flew up from a tree in the distance, his mind flashed to the dogs. Where were they? What were they doing? He leant away from the sound. His hand touched the smooth wood.
            “George, we gotta learn this ‘ere lion a lesson ‘e won’t never forget. I reckon it’s time we went huntin’.”

“Wot, just us? I ain’t that hungry.”

“No, the whole bleedin’ lot of us. Get ‘em up.” Elizabeth walked off back toward the burrows, tossing, “We’re away as soon as we’re all at the twin tree,” over her shoulder.

George stayed low to the ground until Elizabeth was well ahead, then he got up, and lifting his head high, set off. He knew well enough what Elizabeth had meant by all of them and would have little enough trouble finding a hunting party. All though heeded him and only one, the lightly built dull-grey bitch Jane, asked him what was going on.

“We’re ‘untin’, what’s it look like?”

“What’s our prey?”

“Lion for all I know. ‘Eck, I dunno. Go ask Miss Elizabeth.”

The pack that assembled that afternoon under the split-trunked acacia was not that which Elizabeth would have chosen. She would lead, as always, with Jane as second hunt. Behind them as the dogs set off was George, possibly the most experienced and steady of the pack. He led the five main working dogs; they worked as two pairs and a roving lone third. At the rear came ‘Arry, the last of the eight but as important as any: his job was as cover.  The dogs had used this method of hunting since way before Elizabeth’s

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