The Lion Who Stole My Arm (2 page)

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 swifts
³
and a turaco
⁴
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 father held him, high and steady, with just one hand.

“Remember, Pedru,” Issa said, “you do not need two arms to be strong!”

W
hile 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.

T
he 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 an 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.”