Journey to Freedom (11 page)

‘What do they want with me? Why am I to be kept here again?’ he groaned over and over. He had got used to his freedom and the horribly swift change back to incarceration was more than he could bear. ‘I’m alone here now. All the others have gone. Why are humans so cruel?’

Lorna’s paw was soon dealt with. The thorn was removed, the wound drained of poison, cleaned and sterilised. She was bandaged and left in her old enclosure to recover.

‘There shouldn’t be any more infection,’ said the vet. ‘We’ll need to keep an eye on her for a day or so, but she should be ready to travel in forty-eight hours.’

Joel got ready to fly back to Kamenza. News of Ellen was much the same. No one gave her much of a chance. Joel tried to picture the two lionesses together again in the refuge. How different they would look: one strong and healthy and bold, the other a thin, listless shadow of her twin. Was there time for Ellen to recover? The newspaper was preparing for a heartrending story. Whether Ellen survived or succumbed, either way the paper would have the attention of the nation.

Lorna woke and glanced around groggily. For a while she couldn’t get her bearings. So many strange and frightening things had happened in the last day. But eventually she realised where she was. She staggered to her feet, swaying unsteadily, and stared at her bandaged foot. The foot was tender but no longer sent a stab of sharp pain through her body. She remembered the cave and the hours she had spent lying on her side. Somehow the easing of pain and her return to her old quarters were connected. Lorna’s head swung round slowly. She was familiarising herself again with the enclosure’s features. There was something wrong with the place. Lorna blinked and tried hard to think what it was. In her muzzy state it was a while before she realised what was missing. Then she gave a little cry of distress. Ellen wasn’t there. For the first time she was alone in her old home. Now there was no forest, no prey, no hunting prowess to distract her. Just as when she had first hidden herself in the forest, Lorna roared aloud her sense of isolation. She roared for Ellen who seemed lost to her for ever.

Her roars were answered not by other roars, but by the surprised and excited chirrups of the honey badger. ‘Lion! Lion! It’s me – Ratel. You’re back again,’ he chattered. ‘I thought you were dead. Can you see me? I’m at the front of the cage as I used to be. Come and talk!’

Lorna limped across and pressed her head against the fence. Across the pathway the honey badger was trotting up and down excitedly in his own cage. Lorna recalled how the humans had come to her lair in the wake of the badger’s arrival.

‘You tricked me, Ratel,’ she accused him. ‘Why did you lead the men to me?’ She sounded forlorn and hurt.

‘To rescue you. You would never have left your lair again. Your freedom is gone – like mine – but you’re alive. I’m so relieved. I thought at first that the men had killed you. I couldn’t understand why only I was allowed to survive. Are you still in pain?’

‘A little. Ratel, I wish you had left me to perish in my den.’

‘How could I? We’re friends, aren’t we?’

‘Yes, we’re friends. But what sort of life will this be after our adventures in the forest?’

‘Well – as it always was, I suppose. Safe. Boring. And tame.’

‘It’s not as it always was,’ Lorna contradicted. ‘It can never be that so long as my sister is missing.’

‘No. I’d forgotten,’ the badger said softly. He heard a rattle along the path. ‘Oh-oh, look. We’re going to be fed.’ He disappeared from sight as the food trolley approached. Lorna was given extra rations to build her up. The badger received some odd cuts off the same carcass. The lioness limped to the food and was soon absorbed. There was very little that could deter her from eating.

How different the situation was with her sister! Ellen languished in her pen in Kamenza. She was at a very low ebb. People there thought she had simply given up and was waiting to die. Annie spent every spare moment with her and Ellen did seem to respond to her kindness. She would creep forward and put her head close to the fence to listen to Annie’s voice. But that was all. The girl had no more success persuading Ellen to look at her food than anyone else. They had tried everything to make her eat. She was now so weak that even feeding by hand had been attempted; Ellen had refused all sustenance except milk. It was the only thing that was keeping her alive and, because she didn’t
reject it, Simon Obagwe was able to help her by adding vitamins and other dietary essentials to the liquid. But Ellen had almost no real strength. Her flesh hung loose, her coat was patchy and her eyes were dull and uninterested. She showed no curiosity and no change of mood, only listlessness.

When news of Lorna’s recapture reached Kamenza, there was some optimism in the refuge. The staff made renewed efforts to persuade Ellen to eat; they were afraid that she might die before Lorna could be brought out. Annie urged the weakling to drink extra milk and Ellen did accept an additional pailful. Now everyone went around with crossed fingers, willing the lioness to stay alive for just a few more days. They all hoped the sight of her sister would work a transformation in her, but they also feared that, by the time of Lorna’s arrival, Ellen would be too weak to ever make a proper recovery.

Upesi the cheetah had observed the lioness’s decline day by day. It was a complete mystery to her. She was impatient and scornful of Ellen’s illness. She watched the supplies of meat delivered to the lioness’s pen and she watched the dried-up, fly-covered, untasted food taken out again. The absurdity of it really aggravated her. It was pointless and ridiculous.

‘Give it to me,’ she would snarl at the humans as they tried with such regularity to tempt the obstinate Ellen. ‘Give it to me.
I’ll
eat it. That’s what you want, isn’t it? For it to be eaten? Why waste it on her? You know she’s going to refuse it.
Give it to me!
’ But she knew they never would and it made her mad.

The men ignored her snarls. They thought she was bad-tempered. Even Ellen protested.

‘Can’t you be quieter?’ the lioness complained feebly. ‘Always growling at me. I only ask for some peace, nothing more.’

‘All right,’ said Upesi. ‘I’ll stop talking altogether. I can see you take no interest in anything. I waste my breath on you; that’s quite clear. Huh! It’s like talking to a tree.’ She continued pacing around her enclosure until it was too hot to do more than seek out a shady spot and go to sleep.

Ellen was grateful for the times when Upesi slept and there was almost no noise of any kind except for the buzzing of insects or a lazy cry from one man to another as they made their rounds. Then Ellen would daydream. She would imagine she and her sister were lying side by side under the trees, happy in each other’s company, knowing they would be undisturbed. The peace and contentment of such a scene would soon lull her to sleep. And while Ellen slept, Lorna’s paw was healing and the hour drawing near for Joel to escort her to Kamenza.

Arrangements for transporting Lorna were completed. The truck to carry her to the airport stood ready. The honey badger was already crated after a long struggle to catch him inside his cage. Lorna had to be sedated and the men were not going to make the same mistake with her twice. Joel had suggested they should wait until she was asleep, to avoid complications. Approaching the lioness was doubly difficult now. Although she knew her old keeper and recognised her name, Lorna had reverted almost entirely to the wild creature she was. Luckily, the weather was hot and humid which made her drowsy. It was left to Joel to sedate her.

When she was quiet he crept inside the enclosure. Lorna lay on her side. Her sore paw had healed beautifully and scarcely troubled her. This time the darting was easy because Joel was able to get close. As soon as the needle had gone in, he leapt away for the gate because Lorna was on her feet the moment she felt the dart. She complained angrily as Joel dashed through the exit. A few minutes later she was comatose.

In the next quarter of an hour Lorna was crated and she and the badger were packed inside the truck alongside each other. They set off for the airport at once, Joel travelling in the cab of the vehicle.

‘I hope the rest of the journey goes as smoothly,’ he said to the driver. ‘Time is the critical factor now.’

In Kamenza Simon Obagwe and his staff were counting the hours to evening when Joel and Lorna were due to arrive. It was a momentous day all round, for a little earlier Upesi the cheetah had been released on to the plains. For days now her supply of raw meat had been reduced – triggering her impatience with Ellen – and she had been killing small mammals brought to her pen for her to hunt, until the wardens judged her ready to make her way in the wild. Outside her pen, however, everything was strange, and Upesi had not yet emerged from the shelter of some long grass. Ellen hadn’t noticed the cheetah’s absence. These days Ellen was almost always asleep.

In the gloom of the lorry’s interior, the badger moved nervously around his crate. He could smell the lioness close by and, just as before, wondered at her silence. But he knew this time that she wasn’t dead. He understood now that the humans could make an animal quiet and still any time they chose. He waited anxiously for Lorna to recover. He didn’t like being confined in this cramped way and he was frightened by the vehicle’s noise and movement. What on earth were the humans planning to do with them this time? They had hardly got used to their old quarters again before they were roughly removed. Ratel thought he had been treated quite brutally. He had put up strong resistance and had evaded the men for as long as he could. But there had seemed to be an army of them this time and in the end they were too many for him. Struggle as he would, they overpowered him with real force and locked him away in this tiny container. He felt as though he could hardly breathe. He stared at the dark
shape of the lioness slumped in a corner of her much larger crate. He thought he could hear her murmuring to herself, but she was only drawing deep breaths as she laboured back to consciousness.

‘I wish you’d talk,’ the honey badger muttered. ‘I’m feeling panicky here on my own. Why are the humans bothering with me?’

The lorry droned on. The badger tried to sleep.

Lorna awoke on the aircraft. The transfer from truck to plane had gone smoothly. Joel was delighted and, as they sat on the tarmac awaiting clearance, Lorna’s first drowsy growls could be heard.

‘I’m here,’ said Ratel. ‘Still here and still your friend. But badly scared and really glad I’ve got you for company at last.’

‘Ah. I’m glad too,’ Lorna mumbled. ‘I’m so tired. What’s the matter with me? Why am I in this thing? Where’s the—’

‘We’ve been imprisoned by the humans,’ the badger quickly broke in. ‘Only they know why. We’re at their mercy. But I don’t think they mean us any harm. The usual man is with us.’

‘The one who talks to us?
He’s
no threat. But I shall escape again as soon as I can and go back to the forest.’

‘I don’t even know where that is any more,’ the badger told her. ‘We’ve been bumped around and whisked about so much that I’ve forgotten how to get there. We must be patient and wait for the right moment, lion. Freedom once won mustn’t be lost again.’ His final remark was drowned by the aircraft’s engines bursting into life. They were on the move again.

The animals were fed and watered during the flight. Their cramped conditions made them miserable and
fractious. As the sedative wore off Lorna began to blame the badger.

‘This is your doing,’ she snarled weakly. ‘If it wasn’t for you I wouldn’t be stuck in this box, aching in every limb.’

The badger was hurt. ‘Maybe you would and maybe you wouldn’t,’ he said. ‘Maybe you’d have starved to death. The humans would have found you anyway eventually, dead or alive.’

‘Better in my den than in this horrible place,’ Lorna sighed.

The honey badger bristled. ‘Let me remind you of something, lion. I didn’t have to help you. I sacrificed my own freedom too when I entered your den. There was no way out again. The humans saw to that.’

‘More fool you, then.’

‘Yes. I was foolish,’ said Ratel, ‘to expect any gratitude from you.’

Lorna put her head on her paws. She remembered what the pain in her foot had been like. Now it hardly troubled her. It was difficult for her to apologise. She didn’t want to be beholden to a far smaller creature than herself. ‘I suppose, Ratel, we ought to stop squabbling,’ she murmured. That was as far as she could go.

‘Of course we should,’ the honey badger agreed readily. ‘We’re in this together and we should take comfort from that.’

‘All right,’ said Lorna.

It was evening when the plane touched down in Africa. There was quite a crowd to greet the newcomers. Lorna’s arrival was the cause of excitement locally; news had spread of the ailing lioness in Kamenza who was about to be saved by her long-lost sister. The honey badger was less of a celebrity.

Simon Obagwe had acted to ensure that Lorna’s
introduction to Kamenza was a low-key affair. There were to be no photographers or crowds of any sort in the refuge when the lioness was put with her sister. They were to be given every chance to settle down peacefully before any publicity teams arrived from the British or the local press. But now, at the airport, Joel waved to the smiling, gesticulating onlookers as Lorna and Ratel were offloaded from the aircraft. He was in a state of considerable excitement himself and he felt as if he had reached the conclusion of a difficult period. Whatever happened now, the sisters would be together. He had done everything possible to bring that about. His job was almost over.