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“A soldier-hunter.” A new concept. “A lesson for us all,” said the Lion cautiously. “Wish I’d had a soldier for a mother, then. Loyalty to the pack: what a thought.” But that was rumination, not conversation. He tried again. “Have you enjoyed visiting this very neck of the woods?”
“Are you tormenting me?” The lad—he was hardly more than that—sat up as far as he could. “Am I hallucinating all this? Kill me or save me, as you wish, but for the love of the Unnamed God, do it soon. I’m all alone.”
It was this last remark that moved the Lion to pity, or pity of a sort. He knew about being alone. The weather was always cold there.
He padded forward and put his big head down on the man’s chest. The man swooned in fear or disbelief, whereupon the scattershot snare in his chest slowed to a more stately thud.
The Lion considered creeping off. The whole thing was so embarrassing. Yet he remembered conversations usually concluding with “Good night” or “So long” or at least “Piss off.” He didn’t want to be rude and leave without the correct valediction.
He wrinkled his nostrils and sorted out the ribbons of odor. The pheromones of panic and anxiety (the young soldier’s and the young Lion’s, both). The salty stin
g of male sweat, and the cinnamony reek of human feces. Dried urine (faintly aphrodisiacal), dried blood (an astringent to the curled outer segments of Brrr’s olfactory fissures). And mold, but not common leaf mold. This was mold on parchment that had been sized with bleaching.
Brrr had few words for those apprehensions, which were nonetheless tantalizingly distinct. He followed his nose and discovered a satchel of four books. They were dropped a few yards beyond the trap. He picked them up in his mouth and brought them forward to the soldier. He smelled the ferrous note of the belt buckle and then its complement, the tooth-sting of processed tin. The soldier wore a medal on his chest. Even in forest gloom the shine on it was enthralling.
The Lion fell in love. He sat down with front paws laid out together, like a sphinx, until the felled hero began to stir.
“I brought you your books,” said Brrr.
“Oh. I hoped you were a dream,” murmured the soldier, which Brrr first took to be a compliment.
“I thought you’d want them.” He walked the parcel over to the soldier and he didn’t mean to drop it on his head. “Whoops. Sorry.”
“They’re not mine, you monster,” complained the young man. “They’re for you.”
“I have no learning,” said the Lion, “or I’d be happy to read aloud to you to pass the time.”
“You mock me for someone else’s crimes. Lion, I throw myself on your mercy.”
“What can I do for you?”
“What do you think? I don’t want you to return these books to the library!” yelled the soldier. “I want help! Go for help, you cretinous beast!” He was quite pretty, weeping.
“Wait here. I’ll bring you some water to drink.”
“I’m not going anywhere, ’cept to the breast of Lurlina if you don’t hurry.” The soldier ran his fingers over his shaven scalp. “I wish the bugs would wait until I was fully dead.”
The Lion returned. It was hard to balance water in a scooped-out gourd, and most of it had spilled, but a few drops moistened the soldier’s parched lips.
“Since you can’t wrench this iron mouth off my leg, please go get my comrades,” said the soldier. “If they’ve given up on finding me, they’ll reconnoiter at the barracks in Tenniken. Tell them that Jemmsy sent you. They won’t forget their Jemmsy. I’m their favorite. I’m like their little brother.”
“Jemmsy, is it? Jemmsy, I can’t have anything to do with soldiers! Soldiers and their campaigns, Jemmsy. Really.”
“Don’t kid yourself,” said Jemmsy. “Everyone sleeps with the soldiers, in the long run.”
“If I’m not mistaken, Jemmsy, you were among that troop a few nights ago, Jemmsy, boasting about bagging pussy and all that? Weren’t you, Jemmsy?”
“You totally don’t get it. But this is my punishment? To be lectured to death by a talking Lion?”
It was at this remark that Brrr first surmised that not all Lions could speak.
“You’re raving, perhaps from starvation,” said Brrr. “Jemmsy, let me find you some food at least.” He lit out in the direction of Tenniken, in the direction that the fallen man suggested, and when he came across a slope of ripe strawberries he picked several quarts with his mouth and brought them back, delivering them one by one with a roll of his tongue.
The water had revived the soldier enough to be more aware of his pain. “Don’t stop to feed me,” he groaned, cramming the fruit in his mouth. “Don’t come back with a salad course. Just get my mates. Get me some fucking help. Don’t I merit that much mercy?”
“I can’t actually tell. What’s your medal for, Jemmsy?”
“Courage in the line of fire.” Jemmsy began to bite his nails.
