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Long Live the King: Taka's Tale
by: Andrew Slinde
I. Be Prepared
They call me Scar, an insulting and diminutive pejorative dreamed up by my brother Mufasa when we were young. It was during one of our many...disagreements that the self-same brother gave me these scars, only to turn around and berate me for them later. My true name is Taka, but from the tale as it's told you would never know it. Scar. Mufasa's derisive nickname became so widespread within the pride and the kingdom that everyone forgot Taka. I was never as physically strong as my brother, so I was made to feed on his scraps. Being older, and the heir to Pride Rock, Mufasa always had our father's favor. The favor of the king.
As for me, when it came to ducal duties, I was relocated to roaming the outskirts of the kingdom, scanning the borders for potential threats and reporting them back to my brother, who was king after our father descended the Circle of Life. It was here that I saw what may become of our kingdom: men were encroaching on our savannah with their filthy machines, they were dredging the earth for shiny stones, they were poaching our prey and, sometimes, our predators, for sport or for ivory. Taking these concerns to Mufasa, who resided on Pride Rock, deep within the most abundant part of our lands, he only waved away my concerns callously.
“It is all part of the Circle of Life, Scar,” he said to me, going back to taking his counsel with that silly baboon and that insufferable bird of his. To think such creatures could provide any reasonable wisdom over we lions was laughable.
I continued on my patrols, however, more out of concern for our pride than for my duty to the king. Our borders were shrinking with frightening speed as the humans cut their tar-filled paths through our world. More and more of Mufasa's subjects were lying, decaying or desiccated among the ashes of what were once our jungles, our grasslands. I helped to escort a mother elephant to the elephant graveyard, the Place the Light Doesn't Touch, when she had her beautiful tusks cut from her mouth and was wounded beyond repair. I heard her last words, I felt her last breath on my mane.
That's when I met the hyenas. They were picking among the bones of the dead and seemed more ecstatic to see the dead elephant mother than was proper. Hyenas aren't the smartest of creatures – I once said, eloquently, if I do say so, that their powers of retention were as wet as a warthog's backside – but when they saw me, they cowered and made to retreat.
“Halt,” I told them, summoning my ducal authority (in those days, being a duke among lions meant something). “You are hungry and this elephant has died by human hands. Feast on her and be grateful for her sacrifice.”
It was the Circle of Life, after all.
The hyenas ate as I preened and watched, cautious of the scavengers but unafraid. Any lion that can't defeat a hyena in a fight isn't worth his mane. I saw how ravenously they feasted, how they chewed all the meat from the bone, devoured the fat and sinew, and even gnawed the marrow from the bones afterward. I noticed how I could see their ribs under their mangy coats and their spines at the nape of their necks.
“Why are you starving?” I asked. “Isn't there enough food in our kingdom for everyone? Doesn't the Circle of Life provide for you, too?”
How naïve I was back then. How innocent.
The hyenas laughed derisively – an obnoxious habit – and I admit that I got angry when they did it, but I waited and watched. I've found as the years have gone by that waiting and watching were easily the most useful weapons in my arsenal. They have always served me well – better, in fact, than my would-be allies.
It was the matriarch of the hyena tribe that answered. Her name was Shenzi. “We ain't welcome in the kingdom,” she remarked, gnawing on a bone.
“Yeah,” another hyena, Banzai, added. “We were kicked out years ago.”
I was taken aback. I'd never heard of anyone being exiled from the kingdom, at least without good reason. “What is it you did to be exiled?” I asked.
The hyenas all looked at each other and laughed again. It was Shenzi who answered. “We're hyenas. That's all the reason Mufasa needed.”
Banzai and their other cohort, the silent (and not-quite-all-there) Ed, quivered at the mention of my brother's name.
“But surely he gave you a reason,” I said, still incredulous at this injustice.
Again, they all looked at each other, seemingly baffled. It was clear from their vacant expressions that the lights weren't all on upstairs. “He said...” Banzai said, tapping his head with one paw. “Uh...he said...”
Shenzi slapped him on the back of the head, then gave a proper answer. Of all the hyenas, I liked her the best – in fact, I almost respected her. “He said there ain't no place for scavengers in the savannah.”
I was puzzled by this, and, looking back, I can trace my loss of faith back to that very moment. “But you are part of the Circle of Life,” I said. “You eat the dead so that they may return to the earth. We need hyenas and buzzards and flies just as we need lions and gazelle.”
The hyenas exchanged another of those vague glances, but they didn't seem to have a good answer to that.
After that day, I started to bring them food from my hunts: a bit of gazelle here, the hindquarters of a water buffalo there. They were grateful to me and in time I struck an alliance with them that would prove quite useful...for a time.
My patrols continued and, one day, I came upon a dreadful sight. There was once a watering hole at the edge of our lands that had been abundant and clean – many of us drank from and bathed in those cool, clear waters. However, when I came upon it, all I found was a damp spot in the earth, the soil hardened and cracked by the sun. A few animals were trying to lick whatever moisture they could from it, but they were prey and they fled when they saw me (I can still be frightening to some, at least).
I knew what it meant: a drought was coming. We had seen a drought years before, when Mufasa and I were mere cubs and our father reigned. Animals starved and died, hunters could find no prey, and the kingdom barely survived.
Of course, I brought the news to my brother. I told him about the drying hole in the earth, about the prey animals sucking at it for whatever water they could find, and reminded him of the drought that had ravaged our kingdom years earlier.
He was attending to his pregnant mate at the time, and again he waved me away. “Not now, Scar,” he said, almost spitting that foul nickname. “It's all part of the Circle of Life.”
I was furious. The Circle of Life! Ha! Did my brother respect the Circle of Life when he drove the hyenas from our lands, despite the fact that their saprophytic nature assisted in returning things to balance? Did he care about the Circle of Life when he hunted down a young gazelle and rent her from her parents to sate his hunger? Did he care about the Circle of Life when the land was dying? The Circle of Life: the dogmatic nonsense that would lead us to ruin!
“But brother,” I urged, “should we not be prepared?”
By this time, Mufasa's mate Sarabi was going into labor, so Mufasa turned on me. “I said not now, Scar!” he roared.
I admit, reluctantly, that I slunk away from that interaction.
Hours later, that mewling, spoiled cub of his was born, and my chance to rule in my brother's stead ended.
II. The Coup of the Century
What can I say about Simba? Perhaps there's much I could say about him, but not even a human's filthy language could provide curses enough for me to accurately describe him. From the day he arrived on the planet, stepping, blinking, into the sun, I hated him. There was something in his attitude that reflected his father's arrogance, that same snotty spoiled air that came with kings – I remember it in our father, too. When they presented him to the kingdom, when all of the animals, prey and predator alike, bowed before him and swore their allegiance, I crept away to chew on a bone and brood. Up until that day I'd always hoped for something to happen, some accident while hunting or defending the pride against poachers, and Mufasa would fall, leaving me to rule properly. To protect our pride against the human incursion, to prepare for a long and difficult drought.
Simba represented the birth of a new potential king and the death of my dreams. Mufasa never let me forget that I missed Simba's presentation, but he never quite grasped why: I would not debase myself and swear allegiance to another king besides myself. Something had to be done.
It was a few months later that an incident reinforced my decision. While I was on a patrol I saw Simba and Nala frolicking through the savannah with that infuriating bird Zazu. The cubs were singing and laughing, Zazu was trying to corral them for all the good it did him – he always was a sycophantic busybody, but never very effective. It was their song, and that attitude of Simba's, that struck a cord of fear in my heart.
I just can't wait to be king.
Deplorable verses and refrains followed. I'm sure you've heard the song, so I won't bore you to death with the whole thing, but the message was appalling. When he was king, Simba would do as it pleased him, and only him, and without the considerations of other animals and the counsel (albeit coming from a ridiculous baboon) of his advisers. Simba meant to be the tyrant that Mufasa only aspired to be.
You may berate me for taking a child's fancies so seriously, but if you look at the kingdom now, at the state of Pride Rock, you'll see that I wasn't wrong. Despise me all you want, I was not wrong.
It made up my mind that something needed to be done, and that these pair of totalitarian dictators needed to be stopped. The drought was getting worse, sweeping through our borders and draining them dry; the humans were encroaching further and further, their poachers coming closer to the heart of our kingdom. My next few weeks were spent in meticulous planning to end these decades of denial.
It was a day like any other that I sprung my trap. Again, I won't bore you with the details because you know how it happened. I coaxed Simba out to the ravine, I had my hyena allies drum up a stampede of water buffalo, and I ran to alert Mufasa that his son was in danger. The Circle of Life did the rest. My brother nearly escaped, but with a few well-placed claws I put a stop to that.
I couldn't help but whisper to him, as it sank in that this was his final moment: “Long live the king!”
I admit that it was self-indulgent, but it felt so good.
Once the deed was done, once the dust settled around Mufasa's broken body, I stood triumphantly over him. The mewling child Simba slunk to his dead father's side and tried to wake him, begging him to come around. Had I not foreseen the awful future or known what Mufasa's inaction would cause, I might have felt sorry for him; might have felt the slightest built guilty. But I was doing what had to be done. I was doing this for my kingdom.
Still, I couldn't bring myself to kill Simba. My nephew was a child and, despite that fact that he'd taken to using his father's pejorative name for me – Uncle Scar, please! – I still had qualms about murdering a child. Does that surprise you? That such a big, terrible villain like me couldn't bring himself to hurt his young nephew, even after murdering his brother?
The hyenas selected exactly the wrong moment to show up. Just as I explained to Simba the ramifications of what he had done – being out in that ravine without an escort, without protection, and that he was responsible for Mufasa's death – and told him to run away and never return, they skulked out of the shadows.
One must be careful when dealing with hyenas. If one shows even the least iota of weakness, they'll pounce. This especially applies if you're a different species and the male of that different species – hyenas are matriarchal, you see. It had to be done, despite the fact that I had counted on my nephew to outrun them or outsmart them.
“Kill him,” I ordered.
The hyenas went about their task with a certain level of enthusiasm that made me sick to my stomach. I watched them disappear into the distance and hoped that the Circle of Life would not claim my nephew. They would no doubt return and report back to me that they had killed him, even if he did manage to escape. I put it out of my mind and left the ravine, preparing to break the news to the kingdom at Pride Rock. Preparing my coronation speech.
III. A Matter of Pride
They blamed me for what happened next.
I returned to Pride Rock and called together the whole kingdom for a gathering. I told them with all of the sorrow I could fake that Mufasa and Simba had been the victims of a tragic accident and that I, Taka, would reluctantly agree to take their place as king. There were tears and wailing, the gnashing of teeth and the stamping of the ground, but in the end they bowed and swore their allegiance. Everyone except for the lions, that is. Just as I had shirked my duties by being absent at Simba's presentation, they shirked theirs by not appearing at my coronation. Sarabi and Nala wept and insisted that I had something to do with their deaths. It was true, but how could they possibly have known that?
Things went as expected when I explained to the kingdom that the hyenas would be welcomed back and their exile at Mufasa's bidding was ended. Nobody liked that. Scavengers among prey animal and predator alike? It was unheard of, despite the fact that they were a necessary part of our existence, that dogmatic Circle of Life. They grumbled, they laughed, they thought me quite mad, but in the end they obeyed. Except, once again, for the lions, who continued to shun my new allies. I thought nothing of it: the hyenas were an integral part of my future plans, the lions were not.
Did you know that they also blamed me for the drought? The one that I had warned Mufasa about? There's some kind of ignorant mysticism tying the state of the environment to the king – if the land is healthy, it's because the king is good; if the land is suffering, it's because the king is bad. Clearly they didn't understand things like climate change and the water cycle. Had I the power to create a drought or rains at will, I wouldn't have had to kill my brother.
Regardless, I put my plans into action. I put an embargo on hunting – the prey animals were suffering and dying in droves anyway, so killing them off would only create scarcity. The lions had none of this and took to leaving the boundaries of the kingdom to hunt, even daring to go to the places where the light didn't touch – daring to go to the human world. For some of them it worked, for others it didn't, but do you think the rest of the kingdom benefited from their hunting? We did not: the lions would simply go out and glut themselves on whatever they killed while the rest of us toiled for our own survival.
Next, the hyenas taught the other predators about scavenging. This did not go over well. Predators have a natural aversion to eating anything they haven't killed themselves. Even I admit that I had trouble with my first zebra, the dead meat starting to stink and the flesh desiccated by dehydration. We had to do what was necessary, and as their king I needed to set the example, so I scavenged with them. It didn't do much for morale, but at least it stopped them from complaining within earshot.
Lastly, we needed water. I spoke with the borrowing animals and they taught us how to dig deep in the earth and find water. We dug what the humans call “wells”, crude mud holes, really, and used them to drink. The water was stagnant and filthy and caused some mild sickness – even in me, and I'd just eaten a fly-ridden gazelle haunch – but we would survive the drought. We could sustain.
And sustain we did. For many years we went on like this, scavenging the dead, drinking from the muddy earth, all while the other lions left for the borders so that they could continue to hunt and kill and eat while the rest of us made do. We survived for years, but they still blamed me.
“Scar has caused a food shortage. We never had a food shortage when Mufasa was king.”
“The drought started when Scar became king. We never had a drought when Mufasa was king.”
“We could still eat fresh meat when Mufasa was king.”
And on and on like that. I was relieved when, at last, the drought seemed to be letting up. I still kept to my patrols despite the fact that I was now king, and I looked hopefully on the rainclouds on the horizons. I could smell the rain in the air and I knew it was only a short matter of time before we were finally delivered.
Which, of course, is when Simba reappeared.
It was Nala that brought him back with those two clownish companions of his – the warthog and the meerkat, I forget their names. The lions rejoiced in his return, they slandered my name and told their version of what I had done to the kingdom, blamed me for the devastation and shortages, despite the fact that, by breaking with tradition and the status quo, I had saved our people. Naturally, Simba took issue with this and came to confront me.
I was happy to see him again, glad to know that he was alive, but he was poisoned by Mufasa's shadow and fundamentalist dogma, whipped into a frenzy by Nala and that silly baboon. Well, once again I won't bore you with the details – the fight happened precisely as it was told and, in the end, I was thrown into a fiery pit with my hyena allies. The self-same hyena allies that turned on me, too. Apparently they harbored resentment for the fact that they were not treated like royalty and given domain over the other animals, although I had only ever promised them that they would never go hungry again.
According to the official story, I died in that war. The way they tell it, I was torn to shreds by the jealous hyenas – those traitors.
I very nearly did. It took a long time and lot of licks to heal my wounds, and even longer to heal my pride. I'm still out here, roaming the jungles and savannah, hunting or scavenging as I please, still watching for potential threats from outside the kingdom, despite the fact that the worst threat already rules it. One day, when Simba is gone or overthrown, or when I have strength in numbers, I will once again to return to claim what is rightfully mine.
Long. Live. The. King.