“Gotcha!”

The little brown ball of fur collided with the back of Ni’s head. He had barely time to shout in surprise before he fell forward and his face was pushed into the dust. He sneezed. He felt his baby brother roll off of his neck and heard his mirthful laughter. He pushed himself up and rubbed his sore nose. The little bugger could be so annoying sometimes.

“Well, you got me again. Feel any prouder?”

Of course the cub didn’t answer. He was rolling back and forth on the ground, pounding the dirt with his paws every once in a while. Ni hoped he wasn’t going into hysterics.

“Hey. Earth to Malka. Come in, Malka.” He prodded his brother in the shoulder. The little brown cub calmed his breathing and righted himself, looking up at his big brother from beneath his incipient mane, a tiny tuft of black fur starting to grow on his forehead.

“You shoulda heard yourself! You, like, squeaked. When I pounced on you…you squeaked like a baby! It was so funny…ha haaaa…” Malka gasped and fell victim to a few more seconds of snickering. “I can’t believe I got you again! You should get Mum to have your ears checked.”

Ni gritted his teeth, but the grimace couldn’t help but dissolve into a grin when he looked at his brother. “Sure, go rub it in. I know you love your ears and all, what with those little tufts of yours…”

Malka blushed, his paw straying unconsciously to rub his ear. There were little tufts of black fur growing from the tips of his ears, inherited from his father. They made Malka feel special, as if he were a sleek, clever caracal. There was no way to know if they improved his hearing, but he liked to think they did.

Poor Ni possessed nothing of the sort. His ears were plain and unadorned, like most lions. But the tawny adolescent had the upper paw over Malka. He was older, bigger, and had much more experience. His still-growing mane was dark brown, forming bangs over his forehead and trailing all the way down his neck, where it stopped between his shoulder blades. The area behind his ears was starting to get a little scruffy too, and there was a strip of brown fur appearing on his chest. It wouldn’t be long before his mane was that of an adult, full and glorious. But those days hadn’t come yet. Most pride members still lumped him with the “kids.”

“You could always give me some tips, of course. Wouldn’t you love to help your big bro regain his dignity…or rather, lose it.” Ni chuckled. “Imagine it. Taking pouncing lessons from my little brother. Oh, the taunts, the teasings! I’d never live it down. I must admit, though,” he said, looking Malka in the eyes, “you’ve been improving really fast. Who’s been teaching you? Mum? Dad?”

Malka sat up proudly. “Neither. Kumi’s been teaching me. She and Mata and Tomo are all so, you know, good at that kinda stuff. I mean, they’re big kids. They can sneak everywhere and surprise anybody…” His voice trailed off in remembered awe. Malka crouched down low and began to creep slowly along the ground, as if stalking an imaginary animal. His expression was one of utter concentration, almost ferocity. Nothing like the bouncy baby Malka that Ni knew so well.

Ni froze, his expression becoming stony. “You’ve been consorting with those kids?”

Malka sensed the disapproval. His resolve melted and he sat up nervously. “Well…I mean…we’ve chatted a bit, and they were teaching me how to sneak around real quiet…and they’re, you know, respected. Y-you aren’t mad, are you?”

“Those three aren’t respected; they’re suspected. Nobody likes them. The rest of the pride just gives them their own space because they don’t want to affiliate with them. Mal, do you even know what those jerks have done?!” He paused for effect. Malka was looking intimidated and guilty.

“B-but, Ni…” he started. “When I’m with them, I feel…brave. They make me feel like I’m worth something, like I’m more that ‘That Cub Who Keeps Getting Lost.’ Ni, please! You know I can’t…” He broke off. “You know how I get so scared when I get lost. I just…I want to be strong!”

He’d played the emotion card. The teenager stroked his little brother’s head soothingly, if a little awkwardly. “Mal, it’s not worth it. They’re not worth it. Trust me in this, Malka! They’re snobbish, rude, and flaky, every one of them. In the end, they’re not going to help you. I don’t want to see you hanging around with them anymore. Am I clear?”

Malka hung his head. “Yes.”

Ni sighed. “I just want to protect you. You know that.”

“Yes.”

“I can’t lose you, Mal. You know…you know I love you.”

Malka curled up between his brother’s paws. “You too, Ni.”




It had been night for a while, and the last stragglers of the Valley Pride had long since curled up beneath the clump of acacia trees. From the lions’ night home, it seemed as if all the world slept, with one exception.

There was a certain cub by the name of Zira in the pride. She was relatively dark-furred for a female, with deeply set, shadowed red eyes and a brown stripe that extended from her forehead to between her shoulders. Even as a cub she was slender but strong; her build could best be described as angular or wiry.

She tossed and turned underneath the stars that night, unable to keep her eyes closed for long. Every once in a while she looked anxiously up at the sky, and every time she curled back up again.

She’d show them. Zira gave a tiny snarl. She’d show them. Tomo was in for a big surprise. She’d go in there, head held high, and kick some tail. Heck yes.

She glanced up at the stars again. Finally! The constellation everyone called The Dog was directly above the silhouetted peak of the mountain. It was time.

Zira rose ever so silently from her place at her mother’s side, stretched her legs, and set out at a trot. She was headed for a certain place, an almost legendary place, quite a ways removed from the trees where the pride slept. There would be no unwanted interruptions there, out of sight of the pride.

“Zira!”

She turned in surprise towards the source of the whisper. Another cub was trotting towards her from underneath one of the trees. Like her, he was on the verge of adolescence, and his legs were even longer than Zira’s. His fur was a very dark brown color, and a thick set of long black bangs fell in front of his face. When he reached Zira he brushed them impatiently to the left side of his face, exposing one of his blue eyes.

“Nyonda?” she mouthed.

“Zira,” the dark cub whispered. “Don’t do this.”

“Why are you awake?”

“I knew you were going to try to sneak off,” he muttered. “I had to stop you. Trust me, Zira. Don’t do it.”

“I will do it,” she hissed. “Did you even hear what Tomo said to me? ‘If you’re a real lion, you’ll meet me at the Stoneyards midnight tonight, alone. If you don’t show…’” Zira tensed and raked the ground with her little claws. “Nobody calls me a coward. Nobody. I’m gonna show him I am a real lion, whether he likes it or not!”

“Quiet!” Nyonda hissed, clamping his paw over Zira’s mouth. “Do you want to wake up the whole pride?”

“Mmm?” Zira moaned. He interpreted that as a no.

“So what if you don’t go to the Stoneyards?” Nyonda whispered, removing his paw from Zira’s muzzle. “So what if you don’t go face Tomo? They were just messing with you. They’re not gonna, like, come after you or anything, I don’t think. You may have to live with any rumors they spread, but the pride won’t believe them. You know that. Nobody trusts those troublemakers.” He looked Zira straight in the eyes. “But if you go fight Tomo, what if you lose? What if you get hurt? Even if you won, there would be real rumors flying around the pride about you.” He closed his eyes for a moment, then opened them again. “Answer me this, Zira. Is it worth it?”

Little Zira was silent. She and Nyonda had been best friends since their eyes had opened. Instinctively shunned by the other cubs because of their dark coloring, they’d played only with each other, far away from the others. But this…this was their chance to make the others realize that they were worthy of acceptance. Yet Nyonda had always been so calm and thoughtful, while Zira herself was admittedly a little fiercer, more irascible. She was often victim of “temper flares,” as her mother called them, when she felt as if it was someone else entirely, hijacking her body and voice. But Nyonda made sense now, like he always did. She wanted more than anything to be able to heed this soothing voice of reason. Hot tears burned in her eyes. She angrily wiped them away.

“I’m no coward. I’m going there, I’m going to do it. Alone.” She turned away from him and ran off towards the Stoneyards.

A protest formed on Nyonda lips, but Zira was already gone. For a few seconds he watched, torpid, as the girl vanished into the night. It was a moment before his mind kicked back into gear. He couldn’t just let his best friend run off to meet her doom like that. He couldn’t bear to see Zira wounded. He darted after her.

Swift as lightning the cub dashed through the grass. It didn’t take long for the leggy youth to catch up to her, but when she came in sight he slowed slightly, cautiously hanging back several yards so she wouldn’t hear him following her. For several minutes they proceeded across the plain, Nyonda being careful to not lose sight of Zira. Then all of a sudden, she vanished.

He gasped in panic and put on a burst of speed. What had happened to her?! There had been no sound. He ran forward…and skidded to a halt.

As Nyonda regained his balance, he saw that he was on a rocky ledge. If he’d slid a foot further he’d have fallen some twenty feet. But what he was overlooking! Even in the dark the sight took his breath away.

Below him, in a sort of bowl-shaped valley sunken into the plain, was a maze of rock. The whole thing was cast into eerily beautiful relief by the dim moonlight. Enormous boulders littered the area, with smaller rocks connecting them. The strings of formations created narrow, winding paths along the ground that seemed to have no beginning and no end. If you were in one of those crevices, you wouldn’t be able to see anything else. The rocks were too high.

Old stories and myths often circulated the pride, telling of lions throughout the years that had dared enter the maze and were never seen again. It was rumored that their spirits still haunted the place, lost souls doomed to whistle through the channels and chasms for eternity.

Nyonda saw a light patch out of the corner of his eye. He turned towards it and saw Zira below him, right in front of a gap that led into the ominous labyrinth. She turned around uncertainly, as if expecting to see someone behind her. Never before had he seen her face with such profound terror written on it. Her pupils were dilated so wide he thought her irises would soon disappear altogether, and the whites of her eyes showed all the way around. Even her posture was horrified: she was on all fours in a half-crouch with her head low. He could have sworn he heard her breath gasping and heart thundering in his ears before he realized that they were his own. She slowly swung her head away from him and slid into the crevice.

Seized by a sudden fear of losing her, he tensed his legs and sprang from the ledge, aiming for the closest boulder. He landed almost silently on top of the rock, and after only a moment’s adjustment jumped across the path below him to another tall rock opposite. Zira was underneath him now. He ducked out of sight right as she cringed and looked up toward him. Crud, he was being too loud. He peered back over the edge several seconds later and saw her several yards further in. She never stopped looking around her warily, and every time she got to a junction she snarled in frustration. Gradually, though, she worked her way to the center.

All this time Nyonda leapt from rock to rock above her head. He could see the paths much better than she could, and it was he who first saw the other cub a ways ahead…and Zira was headed right toward him.

Tomo, Nyonda thought.

The cub Tomo was about the same age as Nyonda, maybe a tiny bit younger. His fur was a pale yellow color that gleamed faintly in the moonlight, and a huge spiky red tuft sprouted up between his ears. The ears themselves were rimmed in black on the inside. He was sitting up straight, head raised to the sky. His brown eyes were narrowed in thought. Nyonda wasn’t sure if he was smiling or not. It was too dark to tell. He leapt the last few rocks as stealthily as he could.

Presently there was a sound beneath him. Nyonda looked down, and Tomo’s ears perked up as he looked away from the constellations. Zira had inadvertently kicked a small rock in the dark, making even herself flinch. She was obviously terrified to be here. But when she looked up and saw Tomo, she shifted posture and walked straight up to him as proudly as she could manage. Nyonda leaned over the ledge as far as he dared. Tomo seemed to be trying to hide surprise. He clearly hadn’t expected Zira to follow up on the dare. But in a second or two his features had slid into a sneer.

“So, you decided to show up.”

Zira growled. “I am braver than you realize, Tomo.”

Tomo gave a harsh laugh. “Indeed you are, dear Zira. Not many dare enter the Stoneyards alone.”

“You asked me to come, and I came. I keep my word. I always do.”

Nyonda heard something behind him. He turned and looked down. Something was moving in the pathway behind Zira, a lithe shadow that he couldn’t make out. He turned to the other side of the rock. There was one below him on that side too!

“I see,” Tomo was saying. “Yeah, loyalty is nice to have. Well, now that you have demonstrated your courage to us, Zira, there are two options…”

Suddenly Nyonda realized what the moving shadows were. Tomo’s constant companions, Kumi and Mata! And the three of them had Zira surrounded! He should have known that little sneak would never have come without reinforcement…

Zira suddenly turned around and saw the approaching cubs. Her eyes widened in fear at the sight of the twins. The slightly older girls were stockier and stronger-looking than her, with small ears cocked forward fiercely and sharp teeth exposed to the air. Their fur was an almost shocking off-white. Brilliant green eyes gleamed out from beneath thin brown brows and long black lashes. Nyonda had to admit that they were physically very beautiful, but the oozing animosity hid any possibility of beauty of heart.

Zira knew she didn’t have a chance against the twins. She crouched in fear as they walked up to her, glancing worriedly back and forth between the faces of the three cubs that had her closed in.

“You have two choices,” Mata stated. She had a high-pitched, supercilious voice. “One: you join us.” She and the other two extended their right forearms to each reveal a peculiar scar, a set of pinkish slashes in a crisscross pattern on the inside of the arm above the elbow. Each of them had the same mark. It must have been really painful to receive them.

At this Nyonda lost control. “Don’t you dare touch her!” he snarled, leaping from his perch. The four cubs below him all looked up in surprise. Nyonda landed between Zira and Tomo, crouching defensively in front of his friend. A growl rumbled in his throat. “Zira is no gangster. You can’t have her.”

But Tomo had already regained his composure. He raised his head and laughed, a cold laugh that echoed through the channels. “A protector! Ha! You people amuse me. Who were you to think you could possibly stand up against us?”

There was a sudden flurry of fur and snarls. Zira gasped and covered her head and face with her paws, instinctively pressing herself to the ground. But she felt nothing, no claws on her skin. After a minute or two, which felt like an hour, the night became still again, and Zira dared to peek out from under her paws.

She wished she hadn’t.

Mata and Kumi hovered over Nyonda several feet away. All three were dirty and heavily scratched, but Nyonda…Nyonda was lying motionless next to the rock wall. Gleaming red blood welled up in long gashes along his side, running down to the ground in some places. Zira screamed his name and tried to run to him, but felt a heavy, shaking paw on her back.

“Please don’t make this any more difficult for us, Zira,” Tomo panted, no longer sounding cool and confident. “We’ve reached the end of our patience.”

“As I was saying,” Mata began, limping back towards them with Kumi at her side, “you have two choices. You either become one of us, doing anything we need you to, and most importantly telling nobody what you have seen. Acceptance is what you’ve been wanting, has it not?” She bent down to lick the blood from her paws.

“Or,” put in Kumi, her voice somewhat lower and more venomous than that of her sister, “we leave you here to die in the Stoneyards. A secret is a secret. So…” She slid her paw under Zira’s chin and pushed her over on her back, pinning her to the ground. She extended her claws to tickle Zira's vulnerable neck threateningly. “Which will it be?”

No question about it. If it had been under any other circumstances, Zira would have opted to live without a second thought. She had always wanted to feel accepted, and if she had to shut her mouth and follow orders to get that, she would. But her eyes strayed to Nyonda’s limp body. The blood made gleaming stripes in the moonlight against his near black fur. Tears welled up in her eyes. What if he was--go on, think it--dead? Even if he wasn’t, he would be soon.

How could she follow the whims of murderers?

She’d known Nyonda since…well, forever. The only time they were apart was when their parents needed them, which was rare. Most of the time they even snuck away to meet at night to chat and sleep next to each other beneath the stars. Oh, she knew the constellations like she knew the back of her paw. Each one brought back a different memory, like the time they decided that the real Dog had an ugly face, or when they turned the River into a snake and gave it wings. How they’d laughed! How they’d smiled and enjoyed themselves until the last of the night-shadows had fled from their bright little sphere of friendship…

How could she bear to live without Nyonda’s constant presence? It was impossible to even imagine such a life. It was as if his dark, slightly gangly figure was forever etched in her mind’s eye like a crack in a rock: no amount of erosion could make the crack disappear.

And if not life…

“Well?” Kumi demanded roughly, pressing harder on Zira’s neck with her paw.

“Then I die here with Nyonda,” she whispered. “I’ll never join you.”

As the little brown cub smiled in an incomprehensible bliss, a roar was heard on the wind.

Tomo, Kumi, and Mata all glanced upward nervously as the strange roar sounded. It seemed to come from very far away, but it was still unmistakably the powerful roar of an angry adult lion. For several moments the night was silent.

“Don’t mind that,” Tomo muttered hurriedly. “Whoever it is, he’s nowhere nearby…He’s not going to find us here.”

Kumi and Mata didn’t look so certain. “You sure?” Mata whimpered.

“Maybe it was one of the ghosts!” Kumi exclaimed. Her eyes were uncharacteristically wide. “What if they are after us? What if they don’t want us here in their tomb?”

“A myth!” Tomo hissed. “Sissies! There’s no such thing as ghosts. We’ve been coming here for months and nothing’s happened…”

Zira said nothing, tuning out the cubs’ argument. Well enough that they get distracted. Somehow she knew, though she couldn’t tell how, that the roar was no ghost. It was someone coming for her.

That very second her thoughts were confirmed. With another roar, this one extremely loud and close at hand, a blur of gold streaked across her vision. She felt the earth shake as some great creature landed before her, heard snarls and yelps of pain, then sensed something hovering above her that shouted “Grab on!”

Slightly dazed, Zira leapt blindly toward something gold, felt her claws sink into flesh, felt the muscles beneath her flinch but hold. She pulled herself upward until she was on the lion’s back and grasped her paws around its neck.

She felt a lurch of movement beneath her and closed her eyes, tightening her grip. For several minutes she was aware of nothing but the rhythm of the animal’s body beneath hers. The wind whistled in her ears, and something tickled her face. For what felt like hours, or maybe seconds, she flew, forgetting that she was holding onto an animal’s neck for dear life, forgetting that four cubs were far behind her. There was no such thing as time. She felt nothing but the glorious sensation of running, running like the wind.

She wasn’t sure when, but she felt her savior slow down and finally stop. Zira slid dizzily from the lion’s back as reality caught up with her. She had almost been killed back there. By cubs her age! And Nyonda…Nyonda! He was stuck back there with those killers, most likely dead. Zira sobbed. Her best friend in the world, gone. She’d been ready to follow him, too. But her she was, perfectly alive…and without him. She cried and cried.

“Oh dammit, no, no, come on now. Don’t cry, kid. Your friend’s right here.”

She glanced up through her tears, confused. And there was Nyonda, a lump of dark fur on the ground beside her. He was still bleeding a little, but his side rose and fell normally. He was breathing! With a squeal of relief she stumbled towards him and began to lick his wounds. At the touch of her pink tongue, his eyes fluttered open.

“Zira?” he moaned. “Wha…what happened?”

“You know, I’d really like to know what you two were doing out there to begin with,” came the voice above them. Zira looked up and really saw their rescuer for the first time. He was tawny gold, and his late-adolescence mane was dark brown. He had chocolate colored eyes that glared sternly at the two cubs below him.

“Well…” Zira began uncertainly. “We were…I mean, it was my fault. Tomo challenged me earlier today. He told me to meet him in the Stoneyards. I-I was stupid. I shouldn’t have gone. Nyonda was right, he tried to stop me. I should have listened…” She turned away and buried her face in Nyonda’s fur.

“I see.” The tall male looked away for a moment, seeing something that wasn’t there, then turned back to Zira. “Well, you’d better not let me catch you associating with those three anymore. They’re pests, each of them. Sure, they seem respected and skilled. Even my little brother looks up to them, and I wish…I wish more than anything that he wouldn’t. You mustn’t let them rule you. They’re not kind beings.”

Way to rub it in. Zira glared back up at him, feeling more guilty than she’d ever felt before. “I’m sorry!” she snapped. “Okay?! I’m sorry…”

The teenager looked taken aback. “Hey, whoa, don’t get mad, I’m just saying…”

Uh-oh. Another temper flare. Calm, Zira, she told herself. Deep breaths. After several moments she felt more in control and dared look back up at him. “No, no, it’s okay. I didn’t mean to snap at you. I guess…I really must say thank you. We’d have been dead if you hadn’t shown up. How’d you find us, anyway?”

“I was just out walking,” he stated, as if it were of no importance. “I find nighttime refreshing. I was skirting the waterhole when I thought I heard someone laughing. At first I thought I was imagining things, but I decided to see if I could find the source of the laughter since I had nothing better to do. Pretty soon I began to hear what seemed like snarls and hisses, signs of a battle. I picked up the pace. As soon as I saw the Stoneyards ahead of me, I knew I was dealing with those three.”

“So…you roared when you found out that Tomo, Kumi, and Mata were behind it? Wow, you must really hate those guys…”

“I roared?” The young lion looked confused. “Oh yeah, I guess I did. Just the thought of them…for all I knew, they could have been killing someone. I soon found out that they were. Come on, I couldn’t just leave you two at their mercy, could I?”

“Well, no, you couldn’t, I guess…” Zira stood up and walked up to him. “Thank you again for saving us. Um…do you wanna be friends, uh…”

“The name’s Ni,” he told her, understanding her hesitation. He held out his paw to hers. “And you are…”

“Zira.” She took his paw, even though it was much bigger than hers.

“I’m honored to be your friend, Zira.”

“No, I’m honored to be yours. I’m totally in your debt.” Wasn't that what people always said in the old tales?

“Oh, please, don’t say that…”

“I can never thank you enough for saving my life…er, our lives.”

“Hey, no problem. The least I could do.”

“Cool. See ya tomorrow.”

“Good night, Zira.” Ni stood up and began to turn away, but looked back at Zira as an afterthought. “Take care, kid.” And with that the golden male disappeared into the night.

Zira smiled and turned back to Nyonda. He seemed to have slipped back into unconsciousness at some point in the conversation. She crouched down next to his sleeping form and whispered in his ear.

“And thank you too, Nyonda. Thanks…for everything.”

She could have sworn the little black cub smiled in his sleep. She wiggled under him, stood up—he was heavy, but she could manage—and slowly carried him back to the grove.