“I hate safaris.”

George - the largest lion with the largest mane in the safari zone - turned to Naomi, one of his nine lioness companions. She continued to lick the buffalo bone and did not answer. He echoed a roar that scared a flock of toucans in the distance.

“ We’ve been through this, George, we are here to stay. It took us this long to adjust, why go through the pain again?”

Naomi was the tallest and leanest of the lionesses, sporting golden fur, and claws so sharp that the bone she had chewed on had marks carved quarter way through.

“Where did you put the backpack?”

“In the tree hollow, dear. Next to the camera.”

George marched over to the tree, his head held high as though he were in front of a captive audience. Using his teeth, he dragged the backpack into the open. A photograph fell out.

“Wait, that’s…”

“Our son,” Naomi whispered as though she said something shameful.

“He must wonder where we are. Nine years.”

George remembered their five bedroom house, his career as Head Director of Global Travellers Deluxe. Even nine years later, he pictured himself putting on his tie with human hands. His son was there, in his memory, complaining about school, to which George just shrugged and flapped the newspaper he was reading across his face.

“The Curse, if we can just find one idiot on safari-“

“Shh, here come the others. I think I found something, but I’ll need them out of here.”

George greeted his fellow lionesses by brushing each other’s noses, and after a long social chat, he ordered them to go hunting. As they left, he turned back to Naomi.

“We just need to eat one person each. One person to stray into this restricted zone.”

They waited several weeks until the opportunity finally arrived. The strayed human looked no older than a teenager, in full safari clothing and a fancy camera. Naomi and George were crouched in the grass, waiting for the chance to pounce.

“Did you get the gun I found in the backpack?” George whispered.

“Yes.”

But his hold was unsteady, his lion’s paws nothing like human hands. Saliva was raining down the sides of his mouth. Then he pulled the trigger. The bullet pelted through the air, the trajectory far too random to hit the teenage boy, and hit his much younger companion instead.

Both lions remained frozen in the grass, shock and disbelief at what they had just done. The teenager was crying in agony, hunched over his friend’s dead body. And the eight other lionesses were circling.

“That’s our son, I’m sure of it,”said Naomi, “ How could we…What’s he doing here…”

But George jumped into action, Naomi instinctively joining him, becoming the wall between the other lions and the boys. As the safari warden drove in to rescue them, the outraged lionesses ripped the traitorous couple, limb by limb.

It was years before Naomi and George’s son found the spell book in their bedroom, complete with instructions for the most horrible spells. On the page for a spell for immortality, it said “beware, if one incantation is missed, the spell will backfire.” At the bottom of the page, someone had written: “Received this from a witch on safari. Always hated safaris.”