John Burkitt - The Spirit Quest

Lunch became the least of his worries after Mufasa’s arrival.

“Sarabi and I didn’t see you at the presentation of Simba,” he said. Please say you were sick, he thought. I don’t care if it’s true or not.

His heart sank as Taka looked at him in a expression of utter contempt. “That was today? Oh, I feel simply AWWWful.” Stretching, he drew his claws down the rock face with a screech that set Mufasa’s teeth on edge. “Must have slipped my mind.”

“Yes, well, as slippery as your mind is, as the King’s brother, you should have been FIRST in line!” Zazu glared at him. His bellegirence vanished quickly as he dove away, Taka’s fangs clicking together in the empty air where he had been.

“Well, I was first in line,” Taka shot back acerbically, “until the little hairball was born.” What little chance he had of making something of himself had vanished with the arrival of that cub.

Shocked at this outright insult, Mufasa felt his blood boil. “That hairball,” he rumbled dangerously, “is my son, and your future king.”

The discussion went downhill from there. Taka emerged from the cave seething, his tail lashing angrily as he swatted rocks out of his path with a powerful forepaw. His own brother had challenged him, by the gods! And in front of that idiot Zazu, no less. Taka groaned and collapsed in a clump of bushes, hiding his head under his forepaws.

Rafiki found him there a few minutes later. “Taka? What are you doing hiding in here?”

“What does it matter to anyone now what I do? They have their prince,” he said, biting the word off savagely. “They don't need me anymore, do they?”

Rafiki slipped in and tentatively laid an arm around Taka’s neck, relaxing when the lion made no move to disengage. “Ridiculous. Of course you are needed. Simba will need his mother and father more than anything. But there will come a time when he need someone else to talk to. His uncle.” Rafiki turned Taka’s head to face him. “You are special, Fru Fru. He will share things with you that he will never tell anyone else. You’ll be his best friend, and his most trusted confidant.”

“How can you be sure of this?” Taka looked at him.

“Because, I have my own nephew. Or have you forgotten?” He tapped Taka’s nose gently with a forefinger.

The lion blinked, chastened. He looked into Rafiki’s eyes for a moment, then smiled, a real smile, the first one Rafiki had seen from him since the death of Ahadi and Akase. “You’re right. By the gods, I’m going to see him right now!” He sat up and hugged the startled mandrill to his chest. “Thank you!”

Shortly after, Sarabi was surprised to see his brilliant green eyes blinking timidly at her in the gloom of the cave. “Sassie?”

“Yes?”

He figeted nervously. “Can I...I was wondering if I could...see him?”

“See him? You could have done much more than that, had you been here this morning,” Sarabi said icily. “Why bother now?”

His ears fell flat and his whiskers drooped as he stared at the ground. “I was wrong,” he said. “I’m sorry.” He turned to leave, his tail dragging in the dust.

“Wait!” Sarabi looked at him for a moment. “Come here.” She shifted her foreleg as he slowly padded over to where she lay, exposing the sleeping cub to his questioning gaze. Taka stared, captivated by the tiny form.

Simba lay quiescent in his mother’s care, the morning light shining in and gleaming on the little whiskers that poked from his muzzle. He twitched and moved slightly as he dreamed peaceful cub dreams, enjoing a peace Taka longed to return to. Taka bent his muzzle to the cub, filling his nose with scent of his nephew. Making the lightest of contacts, he nuzzled Simba with his nose. “Gods, Sassie, he is beautiful, isn’t he?”

Sarabi watched him wonderingly, seeing him as she had not seen him since cubhood, his eyes aglow with utter delight. “Yes, he is.” She licked the tiny form, eliciting a belated wriggling from her son. “He’s going to be a great king someday.”

A terrible pain wrenched at Taka, and he closed his eyes tightly until it passed. The light seeping in became cold and dull, and he sat up, looking down at the object between Sarabi’s paws. “Oh, yes. He looks so much like his father.” He glanced disintrestedly at the cub’s face, the words falling upon his own ears like so much dead grass. Whoever the cub looked like, it had nothing to do with him. His eyes flickered coldly as he peered at Simba. “You will live an intresting life.”

He turned lithely and paced out.

“...and it is with a heavy heart that I assume the throne.” Taka paused, biting his lip and looking at the lionesses gathered before him, a look of terrible grief etched on his face. But behind his eyes, something capered and danced madly with glee, he had DONE it, by the gods, he had finally done it, and no one was the wiser. Euphoria filled him, and he took a deep breath, as if fighting back tears.

“Yet out of the ashes, we shall rise to greet the dawning of a new era, in which lion and hyena come together in a great and glorious future!” At his signal, the hyenas emerged from their hiding places, slinking down the rocks and crawling from ravines and gullies, eyes gleaming ferally in the faint light of the crescent moon which hung over the Pride Lands, looking for all the world like the scythe of the reaper come to claim his own.

Later that evening, a stunned Rafiki was led out of the cave by Krull and two other hyenas. As he stumbled down the rocky path, shoved and pushed about by the two thugs, he recalled numbly the manic look in Taka’s eyes when Rafiki had confronted him. “Oh Taka,” Rafiki moaned as the guards led him away. “What has happened to you?”

“Shut up,” one of the hyenas growled roughly. He butted Rafiki in the back with his nose, sending the mandrill reeling into the dirt. Raucous laughter resounded in Rafiki’s ears as he lay there, staring at the coarse grass which fluttered in the light breeze. A shadow flickered over his vision, and he glanced up, expecting to see the guards looming over him.

Instead, his eyes met empty air. He frowned uneasily as Krull tongue lashed the other two into a semblance of obedience, then motioned to him with a paw. “Get up, old one. We don't have all night.”

As they neared the baobab, he wondered nervously if the shock of Mufasa’s death had clouded his senses. Shadows flickered in and out of his line of sight, yet whenever he turned and tried to seek them out, they melted away into the night. As they ascended into the tree, a small voice spoke something inaudible in his ear, and he glanced at Krull curiously. “What?”

The hyena glared at him. “By the gods, are you feebleminded? I haven’t said anything!” Nosing him inside, the hyena looked him squarely in the face. “By the King’s authority, I have been appointed captain of this guard detail. Know this, prisoner; your life lies in my jaws. Disobey the boundaries His Highness has set, and I will crush it between my teeth. Understood?”

“Clearly,” Rafiki snapped.

“It is good, then.” Krull nodded to him and departed.

The mandrill watched him descend and take up station at the foot of the tree. He sighed and sat down, legs dangling over the side of the tree as he looked wistfully at the empty spot where Makedde’s bed had once sat. He missed his brother terribly, but at least he had been spared having to see this tragedy. Rafiki rubbed his eyes, groaning, and glanced at his shadow next to him, sharp and neat in the light of the moon which hung low in the sky in front of him-

His face pinched in confusion. The crescent moon sat before him in the sky. A quick glance behind him confirmed that his shadow was right there at his back, as it should have been. He glanced to his right at the puddle of darkness that lay next to him, wondering where the other light was coming from.