3. The Lion

High winds deep in the sky blew from the north and helped the Sandragon on his way. It was both pleasing and troubling. Every wing-beat sent Sikander soaring forward by leagues and leagues, but he knew that a tail-wind outbound means hard work homebound. Still, he had little time for worrying: he was too busy watching the lie of the land below.

As he got further and further from home Sikander began to realise just how huge the world is and wondered how he would ever find the Phoenix. Simply roaming around the sky did not seem likely to succeed. He would have to ask for help, but ask who?

For three days the sand dunes flowed past below with no sign of life. From far above they looked like mere ripples on a great ocean, but when Sikander came down to rest at night the dunes grew to their real size, no smaller than those he was used to at home. Then on the fourth day there was at last a change in the scenery below: a small, bare tree trunk growing out of the sand threw a skeletal shadow acrooss the land.

Sikander flew on. Some hours later another tree appeared, as wind-blasted as the first. The dunes at last began to grow smaller. Here and there patches of darker earth and shades of green appeared between the great drifts of sand.

By nightfall, sparse trees had become the rule rather than the exception and when at last the Sandragon came down to rest he curled up in the shelter of one of them. He found that there was dry grass there too, a pleasant bed for a tired Sandragon.

That night Sikander's sleep was disturbed by a noise like thunder, yet not like thunder. Deep and very loud indeed, it rolled and rumbled around the night sky, made the very ground shake, then died out in a series of coughs echoing the first roar. Sikander was not afraid of the noise. He was not really afraid of anything, for he had never met anything to be afraid of. But he did wonder what might be making all that racket in the middle of the night. He decided that in the morning he would try and find out.

By and by the noise grew quieter, as though the source were moving further away. More than half asleep, the Sandragon made a mental note of which way it seemed to be moving, then fell back into a deep slumber that lasted until dawn.

Sunlight woke the dragon.

He arched his long back, cat-like, stretched out his wings to full extent and gave them a good shake to get the dust off. He took care to cover his mouth as he yawned an enormous yawn. This was not just good manners. As far as he could see all around him, he was surrounded by tall, golden, bone-dry grass, waving in a gentle breeze, speckled here and there by trees like the one he had slept under. The merest dragon-spark would have started a monstrous bushfire. In itself this would not have bothered Sikander, for dragons do like a fire, you know. But he knew that flames would drive away any animals and he needed to find and talk to them if he was to have any hope of ever finding the Phoenix. Sikander ran through the grass, flared his wings and took off in the direction of whatever-made-all-that-noise the night before.

It did not take long to find the roarer: a large and noble-looking lion was lying in the shade on a rocky outcrop, staring majestically out over the grassland plane.

Sikander circled high above a couple of times then swept down from the sky and settled on the rock just in front of the lion, who had not seen him coming and got a big surprise. He jumped up away from Sikander, snarling, growling and lashing his tail left and right, looking very fierce indeed with his lip curled right back over his sharp white fangs. In spite of all the noise and fury, the fact was that the lion had never seen anything like a Sandragon before and inside he felt much less sure of himself than he looked on the outside.

"Good morning." said the Sandragon politely.

The lion replied by whacking Sikander as hard as he could on the nose with his large heavy paw and its large sharp claws. It was a blow that would have knocked most creatures' heads off. But a Sandragon's skin is a good deal tougher than most specialist steels so the swipe just made a loud clang and hurt the lion's paw much more than the dragon.

Sikander felt a little offended by this rude greeting and had half a mind to reply with a small lick of blue flame, just to put things in their right perspective. But then he felt that he was more likely to get some useful help from the lion by letting the offence go, at least for now, and just pretending nothing had happened. Still, there seemed no sense in beating around the bushveldt with a fellow of so little manners, so Sikander came straight to the point: "Have you by any chance seen a Phoenix ?"

The lion began to feel quite flustered by all this. An enormous multi-coloured heavy-duty armoured flying crocodile-creature first thing in the morning, on top of no supper and no breakfast, was bad enough. Strange questions in addition to all that were quite enough to make anyone feel like going straight back to sleep and waiting for a better start the next day.

But in a moment the lion got a grip on himself, realised that the aerodile-thing was in fact behaving in a perfectly respectful and courteous manner, and remembered his great-grandmother Leona's oft repeated words, "Noblesse oblige, young feller, noblesse oblige." So gathering up what little dignity was left to him, he looked at the Sandragon and wrinkling his nose he said, in as regal and growly a tone as he could: "What?"

"I said," said Sikander, ever so slowly and ever so clearly, "Have you by any chance seen a Phoenix?"

The lion looked at the Sandragon as though it had gone berserk, hesitated for an instant, creased his noble brow perplexedly and said:

"A what ?"

The lion was looking very much the King of Beasts again by now, but was still feeling confused and unsettled and tried to cover it up by being as grand and majestic as possible under the circumstances. Sikander decided that he wasn't getting very far with this animal, but since there was nobody else around to ask, he decided to explain the whole story about the thousand years, the wood, the fire and the magical rebirth.

At the end of it all the lion looked at the dragon thoughtfully. "Hmm. I see." he growled.
Then, after another pause for reflection, "Can you eat it ?"

"No." replied Sikander, thinking that the King of Beasts may be noble and powerful, but was not much use for getting any helpful news, and was of rather limited interests too.

"In that case," said the lion, "refer to my Chief of Intelligence."

Sikander managed to find out that the lion's spymaster was a certain snake, hidden somewhere deep in a far-away jungle, when all of a sudden there was a flurry of excitement in the savannah.

Three lionesses had been lying in the long grass and had crawled keeny-meany up near to a zebra, who was quietly munching some grass for his breakfast. When they thought they were near enough to catch the zebra for their breakfast, they suddenly burst out of hiding and leapt at it. The zebra sprinted away as fast as he could, zigging and zagging and lashing out savagely with his hind legs as hard as pistons.

"Aha!" exclaimed the lion, "Breakfast! At last! Good-bye."

He jumped down from the rocky outcrop and padded off towards the scene of the hunt, leaving Sikander to follow his own hunt alone again.