The Lion Who Stole My Arm (4 page)

E
very insect in Africa seemed to be crawling over Pedru’s skin, especially on his left arm, where he couldn’t squish them. He knew he had to sit as still and quiet as his father, but it was very hard. Pedru had never known before how long the night was when you stayed awake for all of it. By the time the crescent moon had floated halfway up the sky, he felt as though he had been awake for a hundred years.

A tiny scratching sound came from higher up the tree. Very slowly, Pedru tilted his head to look up at it and saw two bush babies
¹
silhouetted against the sky. They leaped along the branch together, holding up their arms as if celebrating each jump. Pedru forgot all about the insects tormenting him.

Issa’s elbow nudged him in the ribs, and he looked down. Moonlight streaked the space beneath their tree, with the dead goat a dark stain at its center. Something was creeping toward it, down the slope from the rocks above. A pale shape in the moonlight, a creature that seemed to be made of liquid, flowed between the trees and bushes, disappearing and appearing. Finally it stood still, and its eyes glowed as they reflected the moonlight. A lion’s eyes!

Pedru’s skin prickled, and he spoke in his head to the lion to make himself feel brave:
Come closer. Come to my spear!

If Issa and Pedru had been still before, now they sat like stones, hardly breathing. Their eyes reached into the black-and-white world of the moonlight, out to where the lion stood at the edge of the clearing. Its glowing eyes scanned the night so that father and son wished themselves sunk into the smooth bark of the tree.

Above Pedru’s head, the bush babies broke into a family squabble. They squeaked and chittered and rustled the leaves with their wild jumping. Pedru sensed the tension in his father’s body draw even tighter as the lion stirred, and it turned its face toward the tree. Pedru felt the attention of its eyes, its ears, its nose, and even its whiskers, searching the air between them.

Bush babies,
the lion concluded.
Just bush babies!
Reassured now, it moved, low but swift and decisive, to the dark patch that was the goat, and it began to tear at it with its mouth and paws.

Pedru’s left hand tightened on his spear, and he knew without looking that his father’s right hand had done the same. But still they waited.

The lion found that it couldn’t carry off the goat. It was stuck somehow. But now the lion was too hungry and irritated to be suspicious, and it pulled at the bait again, ripping off bits of flesh, no longer noticing the bush babies rustling in the trees above.

Pedru saw the spear in the lion’s side before he knew that his father had thrown it. It stuck out, firmly lodged between the ribs. The lion staggered and snarled — a sound that ripped a hole in the stillness. Pedru aimed and threw with all his strength. He almost seemed to feel the spear strike home, piercing the lion’s other side. Darkness flowed down the bright coat, as if the night itself were bleeding from it. The lion fell, crawled a little way, then lay still.

Pedru stared at the spears.
My spear,
he said to himself.
Thrown with my left hand! I’ve killed the lion who stole my arm!

But when they climbed down to look at the body, Pedru’s feeling of triumph leaked away a little. Was this his lion? He could not be sure, and without certainty he could not feel triumphant. This lion was a female, a lioness, without the scrappy start of a mane that he remembered on his lion. And he was pretty sure that his lion had not had anything around its neck. The sad, dead body at his feet was wearing a collar.

P
edru fetched help from the village, and at dusk on the fourth day, Issa and three other men carried the lioness into the space between the huts. Everyone came out to look at the body, but some didn’t want to get close, as if they feared the animal could come to life. Children and women touched the fur with one finger. Some giggled nervously; some snatched their hands away in disgust. The men pushed back the lioness’s lips to look at its huge stabbing teeth, and then they popped the claws out of their sheaths. Mamma Lago hit the body with a stick, then ran back to her hut crying.

But the thing that made everyone talk and ask questions, more than the beast’s teeth, claws, or size, was its collar. It was a thick leather collar with a kind of plastic capsule attached to it, and a message was written in worn letters:
PLEASE RETURN THIS RADIO COLLAR TO THE LION RESEARCH UNIT AT MADUNE
.

Issa explained that the collar had been put on the lion by some foreigners who lived in a compound outside Madune. The capsule on the collar sent out a signal, like the radio station that sent the news and soccer matches to the crackly old radio in Mr. Massingue’s hut, and the foreigners could use the signal to tell what the lion was doing. But this explanation just made people ask even more questions.

“If they could tell where the lions were, why didn’t they just kill them?”

“If they could tell what the lions were doing, why didn’t they keep them from doing bad things?”

Mr. Massingue held up his hand for quiet. “I also have heard,” he said, “that the foreigners sometimes help those who bring back their lion collars. They have powerful medicines and a big Land Rover that can take people to the hospital if they are very sick. I think it would be a good thing for someone from this village to take back the collar.”

“I’ll do it!” Pedru said. “I’ll go tomorrow.”

Perhaps the lion people would tell him for sure if the lioness they had speared was his lion or not.

The lion people’s compound was a long ride out of Madune. Pedru was glad to get off his father’s bike and lean it against the sign that said:

There were two thatched huts and several tents. A battered-looking Land Rover was parked under a tree, and a white man with a bushy beard and a woman with dark hair tied in an untidy bun were peering into the engine under the lifted hood. A tall young man, looking a bit like an older version of Pedru himself, sat in the shade with a laptop computer glowing on his knees. None of them noticed Pedru.

Mr. Massingue and his father had told Pedru that the lion people would be pleased to get the collar. But now that he was here, seeing the huts and tents, the car and the computer, all devoted to finding out about lions, Pedru wondered how pleased they would be about a dead lion. For a moment, he thought about leaving the collar and just running off, but then he might never know if he had speared his lion. He decided to be brave. He stepped in front of the young man with the laptop.

“Hello. I’m Pedru,” said Pedru, “and I have a collar for you.”

The young man was named Renaldo, and his two workmates were Beth and John. Beth was from Cape Town, and John was from New York, in America. They were sad that the lion was dead, they said, but they were all very pleased that Pedru had brought them the collar. They thanked him, several times. They made him sit in the shade and brought him a drink of water and some cookies; they were very kind.

“The lion was speared near my village,” Pedru explained cautiously. “It killed a man named Mr. Mori Pelembe. I saw it running away.”

The three lion researchers nodded sadly.

“We’re very sorry to hear that,” said John.

“But I would like to know,” Pedru went on, holding up his stump, “if it was the same lion who stole my arm.”

The three researchers looked at Pedru’s missing right arm, as if noticing it for the first time. For a moment, everyone was very quiet, and then John said, “Well, this collar may just be able to answer your question.”