Part 4
By sunrise, Zara had not returned.
Naledi examined Pula through the service hatch. The cub favored the bruised shoulder for several steps but bore weight on it and ate half the offered feed. There was no new swelling. Pula was sore, but she was not worse.
“You gave me an instruction,” he said as they stood beside the boma. “I made a different judgment.”
“You decided that your view from a dark hide was better than mine with two cameras on her.”
“I heard her hit the rear panel.”
“So did I.” Naledi coiled a cable around her hand. “I was watching her too, Nathan. You weren’t the only person responsible for that cub.”
He looked away. The eastern sky was brightening behind the mopane trees. In another hour the clearing would be hot, and they needed Pula back in the quarantine room before then.
Warden Masilo listened to their report without scolding either of them. That made his decision harder to argue with. The rehabilitation center would send a vehicle at dawn the next day. If Zara returned in the meantime, the team could document her behavior, but there would be no second contact attempt without a revised plan and Masilo’s approval.
“You had a protected cub, a known adult, and a clear approach,” he said. “Now the lioness associates the enclosure with a person moving behind it. I cannot pretend that did not happen.”
“No one is asking you to,” Naledi replied.
Nathan recorded Masilo’s decision in the operations log without comment.
Kabo called from the eastern cattle track before they finished dismantling the loose screening. Zara’s prints had crossed near a cattle post during the night. She had not entered the livestock pen or killed anything, but she had spent long enough outside for the dogs to raise an alarm.
Nathan expected Naledi to remain with Pula. Instead, she handed the transport supervision to her technician and climbed into Kabo’s vehicle. “If we want another night, we need to know where the adult is going and who we are asking to live with the risk.”
The cattle post belonged to Thato Sechele and his extended family. By the time they arrived, the goats were out grazing under supervision, and two teenage boys were repairing the outer thorn barrier. A row of heavy poles formed the inner enclosure for cattle and calves. Fresh lion tracks ran along its southern edge before turning toward the channel.
Thato greeted Kabo first, then Naledi. He had met Nathan at community meetings over the years, but he did not pretend they were friends.
“The dogs kept her outside,” Thato said. “This time.”
Nathan crouched over one print. The shallow drag on the left side matched Zara’s injured gait. “She’s searching. If we can reunite her with the cub, she may return to the pride’s usual range.”
“May.” Thato leaned against a fence post. “And if she doesn’t?”
“The patrol will monitor her.”
“The patrol sleeps somewhere else.”
Naledi asked what Thato needed for the coming night. He showed them a weak section of the calf enclosure where termites had hollowed one post and a solar light that had failed two weeks earlier. The family had reported both, but the replacement materials were still in Maun.
Kabo radioed the community trust’s storehouse. Naledi arranged for two temporary fence panels from Mowana and a charged light unit. No one called it compensation. Nothing had yet been taken. It was the minimum required before asking a family to tolerate one more night of uncertainty.
Nathan helped the boys pull the damaged post. Sweat ran down his spine as they worked it loose from the packed soil. He had visited dozens of cattle posts while mapping conflict incidents. He knew how to enter a loss in a database: one calf, estimated age, approximate value, confirmed or unconfirmed predator. He had not often stayed while a family rebuilt what the next lion might test. Thato watched him set the replacement post too deep and made him lift it out again.
“You leave enough above ground for the wire,” he said.
Nathan shifted his grip. “You could have mentioned that before I packed it.”
“You have thirty-five years of experience.”
Kabo laughed from the other side of the enclosure. Even Naledi smiled. By late afternoon the pen was secure, the light worked, and a patrol route had been agreed on. Thato did not give his blessing to the reunion. He gave them one night before he would ask the wildlife department to move Zara away from the cattle posts.
“I want her alive,” he said. “I also need every calf here tomorrow morning. If the patrol misses her, my family is the one awake with the dogs.”
On the drive to Mowana, Nathan’s satellite phone vibrated twice in his pocket. He let the first call end. When it began again, Naledi reached across the console and turned down the radio.
Leah did not say hello. “The airline emailed me because I booked your ticket. You changed the reservation.”
“I moved it by three days.”
“You didn’t tell me.”
“We’re in the middle of—”
“I know there’s a cub, and I know you can’t walk away halfway through this.” Her voice sharpened, then steadied. “But I rearranged my week, Dad. Emma isn’t the only one who was expecting you.”
Nathan watched the mopane shadows pass across the windshield. “Then what are you asking?”
“Call me before you decide. Give me time to move things here.”
He could hear dishes being moved in her kitchen and Emma asking something in another room. For a moment he saw their house as clearly as the road ahead: the long wooden table, the refrigerator covered with school papers, the spare room Leah had prepared without asking whether he would stay.
“I should have called,” he said.
“Yes.”
“I may need the three days,” he said. “I won’t move it again without speaking to you.”
“All right.” Leah drew a breath. “Emma’s lion has eight legs now. Apparently it evolved.”
Nathan smiled despite himself. “Tell her six was enough.”
“You can tell her.”
The road was rough, and the signal failed before he could answer. This time, when he put the phone away, he opened the calendar and set a reminder to call that evening rather than trusting himself to remember.
At Mowana, Naledi went directly to the office. She had been reviewing the boma footage in accelerated segments when Nathan entered. On the screen, the empty clearing flickered beneath the strengthening morning light.
“You need to see this,” she said.
The timestamp was forty minutes after the team had removed Pula that morning. Zara came out of the eastern grass and approached the vacant enclosure. She sniffed the gate, paced its perimeter, then lay down with her uninjured shoulder against the same section of mesh where the cub had rested.
She remained there for an hour and forty-seven minutes. The camera caught her underside clearly enough for Naledi to confirm that she was still lactating, and when Zara rose, she bore weight on the injured shoulder. Nathan leaned closer, but Naledi stopped the video. “This is not permission for you to improvise again.”
“I didn’t say it was.”
“Masilo may authorize one more attempt. I am going to ask him.”
Nathan turned from the monitor. “You think it can still work?”
“Zara came back after we left and stayed nearly two hours. She’s lactating, mobile, and still seeking the cub. Moving the contact site inside the protected area would also draw her away from Thato’s cattle.” Naledi held his gaze. “I’ll ask Masilo. My condition is that you are not at the boma.”
He felt the answer rise before he considered it: his knowledge of Zara, his responsibility for the cub, the years that qualified him to observe. All of it was true, and none of it answered what Naledi had asked.
“How far away?” he said. “Far enough that she can’t see you. You’ll stay downwind, and if it shifts, you leave before I have to tell you…”
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