The Lion's Tummy Rumble

The pain started somewhere behind my ribs and had spent the whole morning migrating south, like a wildebeest with a death wish, until it settled into a low, hot coal of hurt right in the middle of my gut.

I knew what it was. Everyone in the pride knew what it was. But nobody said anything, because nobody says anything to me.

I shifted my weight against the trunk of the fig tree and the bark bit into my shoulder blades. Good. I wanted it to. The tree was the only thing in this jungle that didn't flinch when I looked at it. The fig didn't care that I was the largest predator for six hundred square miles. The fig didn't care that my breath could fog the morning air and make the monkeys scatter. The fig just stood there, dropping fruit on my head every few hours like it was doing me a favor.

Above me, something small and blue was doing that thing again.

"You're going to rupture something," the bird said.

I didn't look up. Looking up would've required tilting my head back, and tilting my head back made the coal in my gut flare into a small sun.

"Go away."

"I can't go away. This is my branch."

"It's a big tree."

"It's a big branch," she said, and I heard the rustle of feathers as she hopped closer. "And you're sitting under it. Which means you're sitting under me. Which means, technically, I'm your landlord."

I grunted. It came out wetter than I intended.

The bird went quiet for a moment. That was rare. In the three weeks since she'd shown up, she'd been a constant, chirping nuisance, narrating my naps, critiquing my hunting form, asking questions that had no business being asked. Where did you sleep before this tree? Why don't you talk to the other lions? Do you know your left ear twitches when you're annoyed? I'd stopped answering. Answering only encouraged her.

"You ate something bad," she said now, in a tone that was trying very hard to sound clinical.

"No."

"You did. I saw you. Yesterday, by the river. That antelope had been dead for two days, minimum. Probably three."

"It was fine."

"It was green."

"It was seasoned."

She made a sound, something between a chirp and a sigh, and I felt the branch shift as she settled into it. The dappled light through the leaves moved across my face. Bright yellow patches, deep green shadows. The jungle hummed around us, cicadas and distant birds and the slow creak of vines, and none of it helped.

Here's the thing about being a lion. Everyone assumes you're always hungry and always angry, and for most of my life that was true. You wake up, you're hungry. You eat, you're bored. You sleep, you wake up, you're hungry again. It's a simple system. It works. But this morning I'd woken up and the hunger was gone, replaced by something worse. A fullness. A wrongness. Like I'd swallowed a rock and the rock had decided to make a home.

I pressed a paw into my belly. The pain rolled under my skin like a live thing.

"You should drink water," the bird said.

"I drank water."

"When?"

"Before."

"Before what?"

"Before you."

She was quiet again. I liked her quiet. It happened maybe twice a day, and each time I hoped it would last.

It didn't.

"My grandmother used to say that a stomachache is just a story your body is telling you," she said. "And if you don't listen, it gets louder."

"Your grandmother was a bird."

"Your grandmother was a lion. What did she say?"

I closed my eyes. The light through my lids went orange, then red, then a deep pulsing black that matched the ache in my gut. My grandmother had said many things. She'd said that lions don't apologize. She'd said that the jungle gives you exactly as much as you take, and not a leaf more. She'd said, near the end, when her ribs showed through her fur like the slats of a cage, that dying was just the last thing you did, and you should do it well.

She hadn't said anything about stomachaches.

"She said eat your vegetables," I said.

The bird laughed. It was a small, bright sound, like pebbles dropped into still water.

"You don't eat vegetables."

"Exactly."

She hopped down, branch to branch, until she was on the lowest limb, close enough that I could see her properly if I'd wanted to. I didn't want to. I kept my eyes closed. But I could feel her there, a tiny warm presence, watching me with those quick black eyes.

"You're not like the other lions," she said.

"I'm exactly like the other lions."

"No. The other lions are afraid of you."

"Good."

"But you're afraid of something too."

I opened my eyes. The light stabbed in and I blinked, and when my vision cleared, she was still there, head cocked, feathers ruffled by a breeze I couldn't feel. Blue as a river stone. Blue as the sky right before a storm. She was small enough to fit in my mouth and she knew it, and she stayed anyway, and that was the thing about her that I couldn't figure out.

"Go away," I said again, but it came out softer this time.

"No."

"Why not?"

"Because you're sick and you're alone and you're too stubborn to do anything about either one, and someone has to sit with you."

"I'm not alone. I'm the king of this jungle."

"You're the king of a fig tree," she said. "And the fig tree doesn't count."

I wanted to argue. I wanted to stand up and shake my mane and roar until the leaves trembled, until she flew off and left me to my pain in peace. But standing up felt impossible. The coal in my gut had grown teeth. It was chewing now, slow and deliberate, and every breath I took made it chew harder.

So I stayed where I was. I stayed, and the bird stayed, and the jungle went on around us, indifferent.

A troop of monkeys passed overhead, chattering, and one of them dropped a half-eaten mango that landed with a wet slap a few feet from my nose. The smell hit me and my stomach lurched. I turned my head away. The bird watched the monkeys go, then looked back at me.

"You know what I think?" she said.

"I don't care what you think."

"I think you're not sick from the antelope. I think you're sick because you haven't done anything in months except sit under this tree and feel sorry for yourself."

The words landed somewhere deeper than my gut. I felt them go in, and I felt them stick.

"I'm resting," I said.

"You're hiding."

"From what?"

She didn't answer. She just looked at me, and in her look I saw something I didn't want to see. Not pity. Something worse. Recognition. Like she knew exactly what I was hiding from because she'd hidden from it too, once, in whatever life she'd lived before she found this tree and this grumpy, aching lion beneath it.

The pain twisted. I groaned, low and long, and the sound rolled out across the clearing and came back to me off the far trees, thinner, sadder.

"Okay," the bird said, and her voice had changed. Softer now. Almost gentle. "Okay. Here's what we're going to do."

"We?"

"You're going to tell me what you ate. Everything. And then I'm going to fly to the river and bring you back some of those leaves. The ones that grow where the water bends. They'll settle your stomach."

"I don't need your help."

"You need somebody's help. I'm what's available."

I looked at her. Really looked, for the first time. She was tiny and bright and utterly unafraid, and I realized I didn't know her name. I didn't know where she'd come from or why she'd chosen this tree, this branch, this lion. I didn't know anything about her except that she refused to leave.

"What's your name?" I asked.

She blinked. Then she hopped down one more branch, until she was level with my eyes.

"Kessa," she said. "And you're Mosi. I asked around."

"I didn't tell you that."

"You didn't have to."

The coal in my gut pulsed, and I pressed my paw against it, and for the first time all morning the pain felt like something I might survive. Not because it was less. Because I wasn't carrying it alone anymore.

"Alright, Kessa," I said. "The antelope was three days dead. Maybe four. And there was a lizard after that. And some berries I found by the termite mound."

"Berries by the termite mound," she repeated, and her voice was flat. "Mosi. Those are poison."

"They were purple."

"They're always purple. That's how they get you."

She launched off the branch and flew up through the leaves, a streak of blue against the green, and I watched her go until the canopy swallowed her. Then I closed my eyes and listened to the jungle and waited, and the pain in my gut kept chewing, but somewhere under it, small and stubborn, something else had started to grow.