Burn the Sea
The little girl with big brown eyes blinked at the lion standing in front of her. He blocked her from entering the cave as his yellow eyes searched hers for answers.
“What are you hiding from today, little one?” he asked.
“I just thought it might be a nice day to say hello.” Abbakka tried to make her shrug look innocent. It didn’t work.
Matanta waited.
“And my uncle wouldn’t stop lecturing about diplomacy.
” The words she’d been holding back came spilling out.
“He kept going on about the people of Bidanur and the battles we fought with them over the land at Berdatte because they think it’s theirs when really it’s ours but someone’s great-great-grandfather once did something, and I’m supposed to care about it now. A lot, apparently.”
The lion raised an eyebrow at her. “You keep telling me you’ve grown, but in some ways you are much the same.”
Abbakka blushed as she stared at the dirt and drew a line by dragging her foot back and forth.
“Anyway, today is not a day for you to hide in my cave.” Matanta cast a look over his shoulder, toward his pile of bones. It had grown of late.
The little girl with big brown eyes bristled at the mention of hiding. She put her hands on her hips and opened her mouth, puffing out her chest as she prepared to speak. But she withered under Matanta’s piercing stare.
“I’m sorry,” Abbakka said. “I really did want to see you, but I’ll leave if that’s what you prefer.”
Her fingers waved the smallest goodbye from beside her hip, and she turned back to the mountainside.
“You need not hurry away, little one,” the lion rumbled.
Abbakka stopped in her tracks.
“It is not a good day to sit in the cave . . . when we could be walking together instead,” Matanta finished.
Abbakka’s smile lit up her whole face. She ran back to the lion with a joyful skip in her step and buried herself in a hug. The lion’s stern expression softened as she embraced him—his leg, more accurately—but he caught himself quickly.
Matanta cleared his throat. “I said we should be walking together. This seems quite the opposite.”
As they walked, chirping adaiman materialized in the skies and descended upon them with cheerful chatter.
“You won’t be able to see anything with all of these birds swirling around us,” the lion grunted. “Perhaps you would enjoy the view from my back?”
The little girl’s jaw dropped as she stared up at the lion.
“I will not offer twice,” he said, but he lay down on the ground.
Abbakka did not give him the chance to change his mind. She scrambled onto Matanta’s back, making sure not to tug his fur too hard as she slid into place in front of his wings. Her toes looked tiny next to his long, silky feathers.
Before the little girl could thank the lion, he bounded up the mountainside, each stride longer than the last. Abbakka squeezed her eyes shut and buried her face in Matanta’s billowing mane. She tried to pretend she didn’t feel his wings unfurling behind her feet.
One adaiman chirped from near her ear, then another and another.
Soon, she could hear the birds circling, fading in and out as they called to her.
She peeked through one eye. A tuft of white flew by her toes, sending a thrilling chill up her ankle and to her knees.
It made its way up her spine, tingling behind her eyes until she flung them wide open and found herself staring into an infinite blue expanse.
With a whoop, she let go of Matanta’s mane and extended her fingers out on either side, reveling in the undiscovered space where the sun met the clouds. The winged lion chuckled as the birds trilled in their revelry.
“Hold tight,” Matanta called out, and Abbakka wrapped her arms around his neck obediently.
He swooped into the clouds, stopping short of breaking through them, so they hung in the haze between the sky and the land.
Through the mists, Abbakka could see all of Ullal: the sandy beaches and lush forests, the vast rows of crops sprawling over the countryside, and the rivers that cut through the landscape as they answered the ocean’s call.
“I knew this land when it was nothing,” Matanta said.
“Before the mountains reached for the skies and the valleys hid in their shadows. I knew it before there was even a single blade of grass or any human footsteps on the ground. It has changed and shifted over time, and I have watched it all from above.”
The lion’s words rumbled from his chest and through Abbakka’s legs and body as she sat upon his back.
“It’s hard to imagine going from nothing to all of this.” She stared at the land below her feet. “And I suppose even this will change.”
The little girl with big brown eyes did not see the winged lion’s smile as he turned back to the mountaintop. “Indeed, it must. We are all on a path, even if we cannot see it. But the best way to know where we are going is to understand what brought us here.”
Abbakka’s eyes were still in the skies as she and Matanta thumped on the ground, but she scrambled off the lion’s back as soon as he lowered down.
“Thank you,” she said, affectionately scratching Matanta’s side as she walked toward his head.
The little girl’s dreamy eyes cleared as a mischievous smile lit her face. She stood in front of the lion, who was resting his head on his paws, ready to take a nap. “I understood what you were saying earlier. If you really wanted me to go to my lesson, you could have just said so.”
The big green lion closed his eyes sleepily and turned his head to the side as he wiggled his shoulders to find the perfect spot to rest. “There will be many more lessons, little one, and those that you least want to learn are often the most important.”