The Lion's Cave
by Jerome Francis Lusa
The Lion's Cave
Copyright (C) 2011 by Jerome Francis Lusa
Cover drawing by Jerome Francis Lusa
Smashwords Edition
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is purely coincidental.
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by the Author
There was a time when circumstances of parenthood required me to fully discover and then fully display my tender side, my vulnerabilities. It was uncharted territory for a man with a somewhat simplistic male ego. So as not to lose myself, I held onto a vision that I feel defines me, the vision of entering a lion's cave.
The Lion's Cave
I stand at the cave's entrance, facing its hidden recesses with a blazing torch in one hand and a spear in the other. A quiver of spears hangs closely across my back. It is my time to kill lions. The sun on the morning horizon behind me casts my shadow dimly into the fading depths of the cave. From those depths come the slow growls of waking lions, billowing up in waves from the eerie darkness ahead. My torch crackles as it burns, its acrid smoke fouling the air around me. A cold sweat underneath my arms belies the courage that brought me this far. I am struggling to contain my fears, to hold the intense focus I need to advance into the depths, into the darkness, to the lions. This is my cave. These are my lions.
Lions have threatened my village before, once when I was very small, and later when I was a grown boy. But oh, they did more than threaten. They killed many of us, including my father. By day they ambushed people who were looking for food and water away from our village. At night they dragged people out of their homes and screaming into the darkness. The men of our village fought them with spear and stone, and yet the lions came back, angrier and hungrier than before.
I remember those times, and though I was young the horror stays with me. I still feel it on dark nights, and when the grass rustles, and when a twig snaps. Those lions eventually stopped attacking us, and I know something about the courage that stopped them, for I have learned a secret about lions and their caves.
When I was very young and the lions were among us, the men of the village talked of their bravery in hunting them. The men would gather spears and track the lions where they roamed. They would surround a lion as they would a mammoth, pairs of hunters approaching from every direction so as to confuse the beast, while the best thrower would approach the lion from its flank and heft a mighty shaft at the beast's heart.
But lions are smaller than mammoths, and their hearts harder to find. Pierced by the spear, the lion would shake loose the point and, enraged, maul whichever hunters it could reach before fleeing to lick its wound in the safety of its cave. The hunters would return to the village, carrying their wounded friends, and telling tales of their bravery and courage. Some of the hunters would look condescendingly on those men who had not joined the hunt, especially on one named Rhom.