Pedru had been fishing with his best friends, Samuel and Samuel’s big brother, Enzi. They’d chosen a spot where the river rushed over rocks and was clear enough to see fish underwater and shallow enough to keep them safe from crocodiles. They’d ridden the currents between the boulders and chased fish into nets stretched between their hands, sometimes holding fish in their mouths because two hands were not enough to hold on to their nets and their catch.
“If I had a mouth as big as yours,” Pedru teased Enzi, “I’d have twice as many fish.”
Enzi grinned, showing just how wide his mouth could stretch. “I think I could swallow a crocodile!” he declared.
“My mouth is small,” said Samuel, “and I still caught more fish than you, Pedru!”
By the time the boys had tied their fish onto sticks to carry home, the sun was already dipping behind the trees.
“We’re going to have to hurry,” Pedru said. The others nodded. They knew it was a long way back and it could be dark before they reached the village. Of course, they were brave boys and not afraid of the dangers of nighttime in the bush: the hippos grazing on the bank that will bite you in two if you disturb their supper; the leopards and lions stalking you, quieter than breath; the hyenas that will crack your bones; the crocodiles that will drag you under the water. No, what worried the boys much more was how angry their mothers would be if they were late getting back. So they hurried along the path and didn’t speak until they saw the tops of the village huts over the tall grass.
“We’re late,” said Samuel. “I can smell the cooking fires already.”
“Don’t worry,” Enzi replied, putting his hand on his brother’s shoulder. “We’ve caught so many fish that Mamma will be too busy cooking to be angry.”
Enzi was right. He and Samuel had caught more than thirty fish between them. Pedru looked at the fish on his stick: ten. Ten small fish were not going to keep him out of trouble for getting home late, but ten fish and a fat guinea fowl might.
Pedru stopped walking. “You go,” he told his friends. “I’m going to see if my snares have caught anything.”
Before the brothers had time to remind their friend that dusk is not a good time to be creeping around in the long bush on your own, Pedru was gone.
Something had gotten to the snares before him. Freshly scattered guinea-fowl feathers dotted the clearing; whatever had eaten the birds could still be close by. Pedru scanned the ground for tracks. There, framed by the crisscross of bird feet, was a single print: four oval toes arranged like petals around a central pad, with no claw marks. Cat. Big cat. Leopard, he told himself. A leopard that would take the birds from the snares and slip away. Not a lion. Not a lion that might be waiting here for a bigger meal. The hair on Pedru’s neck stood on end, and his heart pounded. Run! Run! He must run away right now! He streaked through the grass and bushes, ignoring the thorns that tore at his skin. Sweating and panting, he reached the path, with the sound of voices up ahead and the smell of fires. He leaned on his knees to catch his breath, laughing a little at himself for being so scared, relieved at being safe again.
Thwack! Pedru’s legs were punched from under him. His body hit the ground, and the air was knocked out of his lungs. For a moment, he didn’t hear or see anything. When his eyes and ears worked again, he found he was being dragged along on his back by his outstretched right arm. He twisted around to see what could be holding him, and he looked straight into the face of a lion.
He went numb. Time slowed down. Sounds drained from the world, leaving a bowl of silence, with Pedru and the lion at the bottom of it.
Pedru stared at the lion. It was so close that even in the fading light he could see the spotted lines on its snout where its whiskers sprouted, the deep notch on its left ear, and the scraggy tufts of mane on its neck. He could smell its breath, hot and meaty, and feel where its teeth had pierced his arm and crushed the bone, although he was too afraid to feel any pain.
The lion was bumping his body back along the path, dragging him into the long grass. As soon as it feels safe, hidden in the bush, Pedru said to himself, it will eat me. Suddenly, he stopped feeling numb and started to be very angry. This lion was not going to put an end to him!
His stick, with the fish still tied to it, was gripped in his left hand. He swung it with all his strength and hit the lion hard on the head. He felt the blow strike, and when he looked at the lion, it had a cut between its ears. Pedru hit it again, and for a moment it looked right at him, its golden eyes hot like the sun. Then it snarled and ran away, and Pedru saw that it had taken his arm.
Pedru woke up in the hospital. Or rather, outside the hospital on the porch in the back, because all the beds inside were full. Pedru’s father, Issa, was sitting beside him, fanning away the flies with an old newspaper.
“How did I get here?” Pedru asked.
His father smiled. “I put you on my back and cycled like a crazy man.”
It was ten miles over dirt roads from the village to the clinic at Madune. Even for Pedru’s father, the best hunter in the village, probably in all of Africa, this was quite a feat.
Issa put down the newspaper and placed his big hand on the top of Pedru’s head. “Now, my son,” he asked gently, “tell me, how do you feel?”
Issa had always told Pedru never to answer any question without thinking first. So Pedru thought hard about his answer. He turned his head and looked to his right. Where his arm had been was a bandaged stump, like a white stick, ending just above where the elbow had been. For a moment, Pedru’s head swam and he shut his eyes. But when he opened them again, the arm was still gone. It hurt badly where the doctor had sewn up the wound the lion had left, but Pedru knew that it would stop hurting in time. The other pain, however, would not go away so easily.
“I’m scared,” he told his father. “Scared that I won’t be myself anymore. I’ll just be the boy with one arm.” Pedru tried hard not to cry and went on: “And a boy with one arm can never be strong and be a hunter like you.”
Issa listened carefully, his brow a mass of creases as he took in Pedru’s words. It was a few moments before he spoke. “Pedru,” he said, “tell me what you can see and hear.”
“The holes in the roof,” Pedru answered. “Children crying. Grown-ups whispering.”
“No, not here in the clinic,” Issa said. “Out there.” Issa pointed beyond the porch to the patch of grass and trees where the town of Madune ended and the bush began again.
Pedru propped himself up on his good arm and looked and listened. He’d always been proud of his sharp eyes and ears, and Issa had taught him to know every bird and beast in the bush. It was a comfort now to look out into the trees and sky, so lovely in the first light of day. Pedru found that his eyes snatched up every detail, like a hungry guinea fowl pecking corn.
“There are five barbaças1 in the top of that dead tree, and a flock of zombeteiros2 in the tree next to it. There’s an eagle, too, far off. Just a speck in the sky. A fish eagle, I think.”
“Good!” said Issa. “Go on!”
Pedru shut his eyes and let the sounds trickle in, as clear as the first rains after the dry season: a mad, chattering, twittering sound and a low kurru, kurru, kurru.
“Palm swifts3 and a turaco4 calling,” he reported. And then he heard another sound — a sweet si si si almost too high for human ears. “And sunbirds. Sunbirds!” Pedru smiled and opened his eyes. His father was standing beside him.
“So,” Issa said, “the finest tools of the hunter, your eyes and your ears, are still working. Now, hold tight, Pedru.”
Issa scooped up the ends of Pedru’s sheet, like a hammock, and lifted his son high in the air.
Pedru laughed and looked down as his fat
her held him, high and steady, with just one hand.
“Remember, Pedru,” Issa said, “you do not need two arms to be strong!”
1barbaças: a sparrow-size bird with a loud, whistling call
2zombeteiro: a crow-size bird with glossy green feathers and a bright-red beak
3palm swift: a small, speedy bird that swoops around the treetops catching insects
4turaco: a beautiful big bird with a purple crest and a loud, grating voice
While Pedru waited for his arm to heal enough for him to go home, he tried to remember what his father had said. He whiled away the hours in the clinic by teaching himself to tie knots one-handed, and how to carry objects by clamping them between his body and his stump. But sometimes all the things he couldn’t do anymore, like climb trees or go fishing, crowded in on him. That’s when he thought about the lion who had stolen his arm, about its hot breath and its wicked, fiery eyes. It was his lion now, and he spoke to it fiercely in his head.
One day, lion . . . he told it. One day soon I will come and get you.
He was desperate to get back to the village, afraid his father might hunt the lion without him. But his arm healed fast, and in a few days he was home. Pedru wanted to pick up his spear and bedroll and set off at once to hunt his lion. But that wasn’t how it turned out.
Everybody made a big fuss over him, sure. His mother, Adalia, hugged him so tightly that he thought his other arm might break. His two little sisters, Zibi and Aji, climbed all over him, asking questions until Issa told them to stop. The whole village came by to take a look at him, prodded and poked him like a goat roasting on the fire, and then talked and talked about lions, over his head. Mr. Inroga’s cousin had been killed by one, just a couple of rainy seasons ago.
“He went out to chase bush pigs from his crops,” Mr. Inroga said, shaking his head, “and he never came back.”
Mamma Ramina had been cycling home one day and a lioness and her cub had chased her down the road.
“She was so close!” Mamma Ramina said, fanning her face at the memory of her escape. “But I pedaled too quick for her!”
Most horrible of all was Mamma Lago’s story.When she was little, a lion had burst through the straw roof of her parents’ hut and taken her brother. It was a long time ago now, and still Mamma Lago shed tears whenever she spoke about it.
Everyone agreed that lions were very, very bad. Leopards and hyenas would take your goats or chickens, crocodiles would take your leg, but somehow that was just a part of the way things were, like the rains and the sun. Lions were different. Lions made people afraid and angry. And now there was Pedru’s lion, which might come back and take a person for its dinner. The whole village buzzed with worry.
Pedru sat still, listening, wanting all the talk to stop. He wanted some action instead, and he hoped that he would get it when old Mr. Massingue, the village headman, came along. His voice was like dry leaves rustling in a wind, so soft that people had to lean in close to hear him.
“Issa Bubacali is our finest hunter,” Mr. Massingue announced quietly. “If this lion must be killed to keep our village safe, he will be the man for the task.”
Everyone nodded gravely at Pedru’s father. They all knew it was a great and dangerous duty to hunt a lion.
“What is your opinion, Issa Bubacali?” Mr. Massingue went on. “Should this lion be hunted and killed?”
Pedru’s heart leaped. His father would hunt the lion, and Pedru would go with him!
But Issa shook his head. “I followed the creature’s tracks,” he said. “They led far away from the village. They did not come back. I searched for two whole days and found no sign.”
There were exclamations of relief all around, but Mr. Massingue held up his hand. “We must remain vigilant,” he said. “Not even a skilled tracker such as Issa Bubacali can predict what a lion may do. But I think, for now, there is nothing to be gained from a lion hunt.”
And that was that. There would be no lion hunt. Everyone knew the rains were coming and soon there would be lots of work to do in the fields. There just wasn’t time to hunt a lion who had stolen the arm of an unimportant little boy.
Pedru tried to swallow his disappointment, but it stuck fast in his throat like a big lump of gristle. He went to bed without speaking to anyone. When he lay down to sleep, he pursued the lion through his dreams.
The next day was the last day of the school term before the rainy-season break, and Adalia insisted that Pedru should make the most of it. So, just like always, Pedru traveled to school with Samuel and Enzi, on their family’s bike. Just like always, Enzi pedaled, Samuel rode on the cargo rack, and Pedru rode on the handlebars. But it wasn’t like always. Enzi didn’t try to tip Pedru off when he least expected it, and Samuel didn’t crack jokes. In fact, the three boys were completely silent. When other children called out to them as they passed by —
“Hey, Samuel!”
“Keep pedaling, Enzi!”
— it only made the silence worse. The sun danced through the grasses and the trees, just as it always did, but no one called out, “Hey, Pedru!”
There was a soccer game happening when the boys got to school. The ball was just a bundle of grass wrapped in string, but the teams were still two international sides — Bafana Bafana, for South Africa, and the Black Mambas, for Mozambique. Normally, Pedru would have been called in as a forward for the Mambas, but no one called him today. He left Samuel and Enzi playing with the other boys and girls from the village and went inside. Mr. Mecula would be starting class soon anyway.
There were more than seventy children in Mr. Mecula’s class, and the schoolroom was already filling up; it was such a crowd that no one could have seen if Pedru had as many arms as an octopus or none at all. All the same, Pedru felt like everyone was staring at him. He found a place squashed between a toothy girl named Esperanza on his left and a boy he’d never seen before on his right. The bell rang. The soccer players rushed in and added to the chaos. Class began.
“Today, students,” Mr. Mecula announced, “is the last day of the term before the rainy-season break. I am going to give you a test on spelling and handwriting.”
Pedru’s heart sank. Why couldn’t it have been a lesson without writing? One of those lessons when they just had to read what was on the board, or listen and answer questions in class. Pedru wanted to go on being a good student.
Mr. Mecula gave out pieces of paper and pencils, and the test began. Mr. Mecula read the first word on his list: “Vulture.”
That was easy. Pedru knew how to spell the names of animals and birds best of all. But writing with his left hand was so hard. The letters came out huge and wobbly, so you couldn’t really see what they were.
“Next word: hyena.”
Pedru tried again, hooking his left arm around the top of the paper and trying it from another angle, but it was hopeless. Inside his head, a little voice taunted him: “One-arm boy, one-arm boy.” He looked at the shapes his pencil had made on the paper. One of them looked like an animal’s ear, not a letter of the alphabet. Miserably, Pedru picked up his pencil and added to the earlike squiggle so at least he would look as though he were still writing. Now it really did look like an ear: a lion’s ear. Without thinking, Pedru added another ear, then the top of a head. Drawing was much easier than making finicky little letters.
Somewhere above his head, Mr. Mecula’s test went on, while Pedru slowly drew: sly, slanting eyes; a dotted pattern of whiskers; a deep notch in one of the ears; the straggly beginnings of a mane. Pedru was in a world of his own. He didn’t notice that the class was empty and the children had all run out into the yard for break time until Mr. Mecula came to stand right beside him.
Pedru looked at Mr. Mecula’s face and pointed to his drawing. “It’s the lion who stole my arm,” he said quietly, hoping that an explanation would somehow get him out of trouble.
But Mr. Mecula wasn’t angry at all. He looked carefully at the drawing. “Hmm,” he said thoughtfully. He took a
n exercise book out of his desk drawer and gave it to Pedru. “Drawing will help you practice pen control, Pedru, so you will learn to write with your left hand. I want you to fill this exercise book with drawings and show it to me when school starts again after the rains.”
Pedru flicked through the empty pages in wonder. No one ever had a whole exercise book to themselves — not ever! It was amazing, but also daunting. “Do I have to fill all the pages, Mr. Mecula?” Pedru asked.
“Yes, Pedru. You do. But I think you’ll find it easier than you expect,” Mr. Mecula said, pointing to the picture of the lion. “Your left hand seems to know what it’s doing already!”
Now that the rains had come, it was the busiest time in the fields. Everyone from the village was out working from dawn to dusk. Pedru was determined to prove himself to be just as strong and useful as always, digging, hoeing, and planting with his left hand.
“You will be like my uncle Dano,” Adalia told him. “He was a fine fisherman even though a crocodile took his leg.”
Pedru knew she was trying to be kind, but he didn’t want to be like anyone who was a cripple. He couldn’t stand how the other children looked at him now, so instead of playing soccer in his spare time, he went off on his own and practiced with his spear. He threw it over and over again, strengthening his left arm and improving his aim.
Adalia didn’t let him forget Mr. Mecula’s exercise book. Every evening when she lit the lamp in their hut, she put the book down in front of him. “Throwing spears isn’t the only kind of practice you need!” she told him. “One drawing every day, please.”
But after a few days, Adalia didn’t need to nag him. It was comforting to recall some part of each day and see it come to life again under his hand. Slowly the pages began to fill up: a guinea fowl, a hammerkop,1 the new shoots showing in rows in the fields, a basking lizard, his sisters carrying a bucket between them.
The Lion Who Stole My Arm Page 1