As I came up closer to the river, I realised that my guess was right. It was noon, and the river was all but shallow. The water was just below my knee. On the sand downstream lay a huge crocodile, looking at me with one eye.

“Hey, kid! Where are you going?” I heard his hoarse voice.

“None of your business!”

“Is it how you talk to someone who’s older than you?” said the lizard, turning his toothy muzzle towards me. “I remember your great-grandfather as a foal just like you. I’m gonna get in the water and bite off your leg. Is it what you want?”

“Oh yes, with the sun like that in the sky, you have energy no more than elephant’s dung!”

“Indeed, I better get a warm just a little longer. But when monkeys grab you by the scruff and throw you out, we’ll have a talk.”

“Whatever you say, swamp lizard. I’ll dance upon your tail!” I shouted, hurriedly hopping out of the water to the opposite bank and climbing a steep cliff. Mocking crocodiles too long could bring you into a lot of troubles. One moment you wanted to drink, and the other you had good chances to get into their jaws instead of an antelope.

The crocodile only smiled and closed his eye.

So I was standing on the other side. Ahead was a single winding path leading deep into the thicket. Frankly speaking, it was not even a path, but just a passage that was overgrown with vines not so much as other ways. Before stepping onto it, I pulled a pouch with a brown bad-smelling powder out of my bag and tried to evenly sprinkle it over my body, sneezing a couple of times. Long ago I had read the recipe for this powder in one of my grandmother’s books. Monkeys could not stand the smell, and due to that I was not afraid to be suddenly caught by my mane or tail and thrown into the river. But there still was a danger to get something heavy fallen onto my head, so I was nevertheless going to keep my eyes open.

But as I made my way deep into the woods, I knew something was wrong. Strange silence wrapped the place. The elephant trumpeting in a distance, the eagle screaming in the sky, some birds twittering in tree foliage—I could hear it all. But what had had to happen a hundred steps ago was not happening. No one tried to attack me with stones or poops. It was like nasty little devils had disappeared somewhere.

“Well, better for me. Probably the effect of my powder.”

After a short walk through a spiderweb of vines, I noticed before me an overgrown jumble of huge boulders on top of which was mounted the ancient wooden totem meaning danger. There was no living being around. I walked around the totem and my heart skipped a beat when I noticed the purpose of my journey: small patches of grey moss growing on the rocks.

It was too simple. I took a tuft of moss in my teeth, and was going to put it in my bag when I realised that things were not so good as it seemed at first glance. Under the shade of trees, I saw two yellow eyes.

O Sun and Stars, not this.

With my right legs to my belly, I rolled to the side. A coal-black shadow of muscles and claws gently landed on the spot where I was standing a second ago.

I quickly jumped up and looked at it. The panther seemed to be quite young and hardly began to hunt on her own.

“You’re not going anywhere.” Her voice felt soft and calm.

“I’ll try,” I answered, and rushed away as fast as I could.

The panther darted sideways, pushing off from the totem and charging after me in long leaps. I could still have some chances at a long distance, but amidst these intertwined lianas...

Suddenly, the tree foliage stirred and pebbly screams filled the air. Bloody macaques saw that they were no longer in danger and crawled out of their shelters. Dodging another stone, I looked around—only to see that it was not so bad for me. The panther caught a rock right in her forehead, and fell head over paws in the bushes. I got another ten seconds to think about my situation. That was enough.

Having thrown out the gourd which beated at my side, I ran in the same direction as I started unbuttoning my breast bag. Inside was what I needed now: a clay flask of powder. A mixture of a dozen herbs designed to treat broken bones. A pretty specific mixture.

A slight gap between trunks came into my vision, and soon I ran out on a smooth stony clearing, the dense thicket behind, the river under a steep cliff before. Here everything would be decided. I opened my breast bag to pull out the clay flask and could not catch its plug with my teeth for a long time, so great was my fear. Finally the cork was removed, and I stood to wait for my pursuer.

It was not long before she appeared. The panther jumped out from bushes and fell to the ground, staring at me with her round yellow eyes. The sun shone brightly here, and the beast did not look such terrible black shadow as in the shade of woods. I saw a bruise from the stone on her forehead, but a lot of other, older injuries covered her body. And she looked very thin, her ribs bulging out under the skin. She clearly was not a good huntress.

“You can’t escape,” said the panther, breathing hard this time. I remained silent, clenching the opened bottle of powder in my mouth. She turned to me, swaying her backside to and fro—she jumped. Everything that followed was like in a blur; I knew my every move.

I inhaled.

Closing my eyes and holding my breath. Crouching. Making a sharp movement of my head, to empty the light volatile powder in the direction of the panther and above me. Bending down and rolling towards her. In our games, when Imara ran at me, it always worked.

I exhaled and opened my eyes.

The panther stopped dead, snorting and rubbing her eyes with her paws. It had worked.

“W-What did you do to me? I don’t see anything! I... can barely breathe! What did you do?!” she wailed, sneezing funnily and spinning in place.

I kept quiet. She could pinpoint my location from my voice and attack me. Tree branches were already crunching under the weight of monkeys who gave shrill cries and aptly threw stones at us both. I should have left. I turned and darted to my right, only to run into impassable dried bushes. I could not go back to the thicket because I had not looked where I ran, so now I had no idea where I was. There was only one way left: past the panther.

She was lying face down, her forepaws on her eyes. A vast deal of stones was scattered around, and monkeys did not refuse themselves in pleasure to throw one more.

I started to carefully walk around her from the side of the cliff.

“You... I smell you. I-Achoo! I know where you are, you mean zebra! You think your magic can save you from my claws?” With that, she rose to her paws, shuddering under the hail of stones, and turned toward me, preparing for a leap. I looked back, where a cliff went down just behind my tail. If she jumped...

“Wait!” I said, even not knowing why. “Don’t attack me, or you will be dead!”

“You won’t fool me twice, sneaky wretch!” she cried, and jumped. For the last time.

I did not even have to dodge. She swept past me a few steps to the left. A second later I heard the scrape of claws on stone, and noticed only a black tail disappearing over the cliff.

The cries of monkeys subsided at once. Well, at least there was something good about these creatures. I carefully approached the precipice, peeking over its edge. Motionless, the panther was lying on a narrow sandy shore. The cliff itself was not a vertical stone wall as I thought, but just a very steep slope with protruding dry roots of trees.

Now I should have left this plateau as soon as possible and find a place to cross the river. But instead, I noticed a well-trodden goat path leading down and ran to it. Something just came over me. I had never seen anyone die before.

The big cat shifted slightly and tried to shrink back from the water. Coming closer, I saw a trail of blood running behind her on the sand and... I did not dare to look over there. Instead, I drew my attention to two small crocodiles that emerged above the river surface. These guys were clearly intended to eat. I grabbed a dry branch with my teeth and stood between them and her.

One of them began to crawl out of the water. “Oh oh, look. I think we got dessert for our dinner!”

“Just try to get up here, you green maggot!” And this was my answer. I looked at my not-so-impressive weapon and threw it away. Hooves would do it a way better.

“Are you a nut? No one dares to stand between a crocodile and his prey.”

“Crawl a little closer and find out!”

“Shut up, kids!” I heard the familiar voice, and a huge bulk of my old acquaintance appeared above the water. He could swallow me whole at once. But instead, he looked at the panther and said, “Get out of here.”

“But grandpa!” the crocodiles exclaimed as they stared at their grandsire in disbelief.

“I said get out!”

They reluctantly turned around, flopping back into the river and vanishing underwater.

“You are either too brave, or too stupid,” said the large crocodile, considering me with his eye. “Maybe both. This prey is still ours. I’m only giving you time out of respect for your great-grandfather. My boys will be back soon, and you better be away by that moment.”

Then he dived back just like his offspring, leaving suspiciously few ripples on the surface for his size. Like an old skilled killer he was. I had no idea who my great-grandfather was for them, but I said a mental thanks to him. Whatever business he had done with crocodiles, it saved me.

The panther showed no signs of life. I came close, and immediately regretted it. A claw whooshed past my face like lightning. But there was nothing more to fear, for the last bits of the strength were leaving the mortally wounded predator.

“Stay back! One more step and I’ll gut you!” she whispered loudly. I looked at her own viscera stretching across the sand. How morbid irony could be.

“What is your name?” I asked, slowly circling around her.

She tried to turn her head after me. “Like you care.”

“Tell me!”

“I-I don’t know. I don’t remember it...” the cat said with a wince, dropping her head on the sand.

“You don’t remember your name?”

“Yes, I don’t! What do need from me? Let me die in peace!” she barked, and suddenly shut her mouth to take a breath.

“I’ll call you Mweusi Paka. It means ‘black cat’ in the language of my ancestors.”

“Sounds stupid.”

“But now you have a name that can be written in the Book of Moon.”

I sat down next to the panther, put my hoof on her side and closed my eyes.

“Mwenyezi nonoe nyota. Roho ya wawindaji kumaliza safari ya siku yake, na kuanza njiausiku. Kuongeza kama jina lake—Mweusi Paka katika kitabu, hivyo alipata kupita katika milkiyako,” I said, trying to pronounce the words correctly.

When I finished reading the old ritual song, I took a purse with pressed pills from my breast bag, chewed one and put the resulting pulp in the panther’s mouth. She immediately tried to spit it out, but I held her back.

She moved her legs weakly. “What you doing? What it’s for...”

“It will relieve the pain,” I explained. “It’s a dried infusion of a sleepy flower.”

She stopped jerking and finally started to breathe evenly. I began to meditate. A quiet splash of water and a steady hooting of some bird in the woods contributed to this.

“So cold...” the panther whispered after a while.

I moved to her and lay down. A black paw fell on my side, letting the claws right into my ribs. I gritted my teeth and endured the pain.

“I finally caught someone... So... So hungry...” she whispered again and gasped one last time.

There would be a lot of food in the place you were going to.

I did not want to leave the body of this hapless predator to the crocodiles, but I had already spent too much time here. They could return at any moment.

The day had long come to an end, and the ford I had used to get across the river was no longer safe. I had been here too long, so now I faced the trouble of sleeping on this bank. But there simply was no place to spend a night. Stay too close to the water—crocodiles would get you. Stay too close to the thicket—damn monkeys would not give you rest.

I sat on a large snag sticking out of the sand in front of the shallows, musing over my situation. Crimson and purple colours had already begun to paint the western sky, and flocks of birds were returning to their nests. From some place faraway came a lion’s roar. Bad. Too bad.

“Any problems?”

Caught by surprise, I started, tumbled over the snag and fell on my back. The bloody old crocodile watched me with his eye, and I bet he was smiling all over his toothy mouth underwater. A single moment of losing my concentration, and he already was there to use it.

“No problems! For Sun’s sake, was it necessary to frighten me so? I almost gave up my spirit!” I sighed, awkwardly scrambling to my hooves.

“Well, I’m sorry. You were sitting like a monument, so it would’ve been a crime to ignore you.”

I looked around in search of the ways to escape. “What do you want from me? Eat me? Do you crocodiles always have a nice heart-to-heart with your prey?“

“Do I look like I need you? Skin and bones. I have a whole antelope hidden under a driftwood at the bottom, that’s enough for a week.”

“What do you want then?”

“You can spend a night here. We won’t hurt you, I promise.”

I might as well believe the promise of a dung beetle.

“You have no other choice anyway. Besides, I have business for you.”

“What kind of?”

“One just for you. I have a grandson. He was a good kid, hopeful but too curious. The day before yesterday he ate some strange fish and went blind. A blind crocodile is a dead crocodile, you know. If you help him with your magic, you’ll stay safe.”

I tried not to think how he knew about my abilities, but that old lizard was right. There was no other choice. Besides, it was awfully fun for me to try to practice potions of my own making.

“Fine. Get your boy over here, and don’t forget to find the same fish.”

The crocodile blinked his eye and disappeared underwater. On the beach lay a lot of dry driftwood, some of which I used to lit a fire and start brewing.

Necessary Potions and Ingredients for Them, Volume Two, Part Five, ‘Common potions for the removal of poisons of animal origin from the body’. I knew this recipe by heart, as well as the entire book.

I did not have a pot with me, so I had to brew in a clay mug from which I usually drank tea.

The sun had almost completely disappeared behind the horizon, blurred by an unsteady haze rising above the cooling earth. First bats were soaring up over my head from the woods, and more than often I could hear lions roar across the savannah. The air grew cold. I moved closer to the fire, treating with a special ointment wounds from the panther’s claws on my side. There was nothing else to do, so I sat down to meditate. When the velvet canopy of night fell on the plains, and the moon rose over all the sublunar world, and my stuff had boiled five times as it was required, he returned.

The crocodile drew a half of his body out on the beach. Every print of his paws was five hooves in size, no less. “Is it ready?”

“Yeah. Got your kid?” I asked with the most pompous expression I could put on my face. In fact, I was just scared.

“Here he is,” said the crocodile, and another beast crawled ashore slowly.

If you could call him a kid, it was only in comparison with his grandfather. The size of this poor crocodile child was not much smaller than of an adult.

“I smell smoke... What’s next, grandpa?” he asked in a deep low voice that, somehow, made me smile.

“Lie still, and she will help you. Do what this zebra say to you.”

“Zebra? What zebra are you talking about?”

“Just lie there and listen. And don’t move, or you’ll stay blind.”

I went to the younger crocodile and lifted his eyelid. The eye was completely white. Just as I thought. “Found the fish?”

“Yes, this is it,” he said, tilting his head. A pretty half of big fish of bright rosy colour fell from his jaws.

I tore off several scales from it and dumped the residues back into the water. The stench of it was unbearable.

“I also need your tooth. You’re lucky you’re a crocodile; the medicine just needs one.”

“There’s one sort of loose at the left,” he said and opened his jaws widely. I involuntarily shrank back. To stand by that row of knives was, at least, not a quite pleasant thing. It would take him one move of his head to swallow me whole. I found the wobbly tooth, and with one well-aimed punch, I knocked it out with a rock. The crocodile jolted, snapping his jaws a few inches from my nose.

Reproachfully looking at his grandfather who clearly enjoyed the show, I ground the tooth between two stones and mixed it up with the fish scales, adding them to the broth. Now everything was ready.

“The effect isn’t immediate, your vision will partially restore by morning,” I said, pouring the potion right in his throat. “You’ll have to wait a whole week to see as before. And don’t you eat anything colourful and weird.”

“Thanks, ma’am,” he muttered and slid into the river.

Ma’am? That was unexpected. Did my voice really sound so grown-up?

I lay by the crackling campfire and read a book about northern forest plants and their properties. To me that thing—that ‘forest’—seemed to be a purely amazing place. Huge trees covering the sun with foliage, a great variety of different plants and mushrooms on every clearing, not to mention all creatures living there. Although it was unlikely that I would ever see such places with my own eyes, I knew all the local flora by heart; you never knew what knowledge you might need. I had two books in case of long evenings at a campfire, just like tonight—I was always a bad sleeper. Night critters chirruped in bushes along the beach, and in the clear sky hung the blind silver eye of the moon. A pattern of dark spots on it resembled the head of a unicorn. I had asked adults many times what this pattern meant, but no one had ever been able to answer me clearly.

The old crocodile was on the same spot, his eyes closed. Since he had crept out a few hours ago, he did not move a muscle or make a sound.

After reading another chapter, I felt a pleasant spicy smell. My tea had just started to boil. With a twig in my mouth, I carefully fished my mug out of hot coals. I took it in my hooves, savouring its wondrous flavour once again and making a little sip. My grandmother’s collection was of different herbs, excellent and great as always. After one sip my mind cleared immediately, and the world around seemed to gain nice sharpness to its features.

“Tonight is beautiful, isn’t it?”

I choked and dropped the mug right into the fire, which made a hissing sound and puffed some unpleasant steam at my face. The crocodile was on the same spot—watching me with his eye, smirking a little with a corner of his mouth.

For the second time! I got caught again. And it was not the loss of alertness, but rather the loss of tea that made me mad. It was my last portion. I did not take too much of it with me.

“Thank you for helping my grandson.”

I wanted to hurl a hoofful of coals at him. But I suppressed the desire and, with a sigh, took the twig once again.

“You’re welcome...” I muttered, picking my empty mug out of the fire.

“I’m just curious, why did you muck about with that panther?”

“And why are you curious?”

“Because none of the locals, if he’s not a crazy one, would think of caring about who just almost got him eaten.”

“So I’m the one who is crazy. I don’t know, I just suddenly felt like I had to do it. My grandmother taught me that any life is worthy of compassion. I’d do the same for you. Maybe.”

“Your great-grandfather used to say like that.” My great-grandfather, again.

I made my way to the water to rinse the mug. “So how did you two cross paths? You didn’t try to eat him, did you?”

“It was long ago. I was no bigger than those two who had their eye on your dead cat, you know. I was lying on the beach not far from here. Full as a tick, happy, basking in sunlight, napping a bit. And then an elephant stepped on me.”

I fell about laughing and snorting.

“Nothing funny about that. I know it’s at least weird not to notice an elephant. But I did it somehow. My brothers, of course, decided not to warn me and fled. I was lucky that he didn’t care about me; he just came to clean himself and stepped on me for fun. In the end, my hind legs simply failed to move after such a moral pressure. I couldn’t even swim right, and I would have been over. If it hadn’t been for your ancestor.

“So I had been lying on the beach for a week, angry and hungry. I had certainly been going to die. Suddenly, he came up to me and said, ‘What is your name?’ I wanted to grab his leg, but I didn’t have the strength at all. He said, ‘I’ll call you Mamba.’ Sounds stupid. And then he shoved under my nose a bottle full of something, that I blacked out.

“When I woke up, I was nice and healthy. Just as angry and hungry, but my legs were working fine, so I caught myself some lunch. After that, your grandfather often walked past my river to monkeys’ bushes. And when he saw me, he stopped and we started talking about stuff. I even gave him some of my teeth.”

“But how do you know that I’m the great-granddaughter of the one who healed you?”

“I am old and know many things, girl,” the crocodile sighed, and said no more.

Author's Note