Every 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 babies¹ 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.

¹bush baby: a nocturnal squirrel-size relative of monkeys, with huge eyes and ears and long back legs for leaping