Review
Culture
Film & TV
9 min read

Family dramas

It’s family ties that bind together a superhero story, a horror tale and a rom-com. Yaroslav Walker’s review sheds light on what these ties unexpectedly reflect, as he reviews Ant-Man & the Wasp: Quantumania, Knock at the Cabin, and What’s Love Got to Do With It?
Father and daughter super heroes stand and look to the left.
Kathryn Newton and Paul Rudd play Cassie Lang and her father Scott Lang - Ant-Man.
Marvel Studios

Ant-Man & the Wasp: Quantumania is the latest release from the Marvel Empire (in whose shadow we all live). The Empire is very much faltering. The main (sensible) criticisms levelled at the Marvel franchise are formulaic films and over-complicated stories that require you to not only have watched all the relevant films in the series, but also now the various TV series pumped out by Disney Plus. Ant-Man doesn’t fix them. 

The plot sees Scott Lang enjoying a happy life: adored by a grateful public and with lots of time to spend with his partner Hope and his daughter Cassie. However, Cassie has grown up since ‘the snap’ and is now protesting injustice and getting arrested. Scott wonders how he can best re-connect with Cassie and make up for the five years he lost. This bonding is interrupted when all the heroes are sucked into the Quantum Realm by Kang who wishes to use the Ant-Man powers to retrieve a thing to escape the thing to do a bad thing… no sorry, it’s just ridiculous, I have no idea what is going on! 

I’m a nerd and a fan, but even I sat there and got depressed at how incomprehensible and inconsequential it all felt. A simple ‘hero must retrieve object to save loved-ones’ plot groans under the sheer amount of exposition and world-building and forced emotional plotting. The first fifteen minutes are a passable family drama, and then everything is just CGI and battles and quips – SO MANY QUIPS! 

Nothing is able to sit as a dramatic moment: immediately a joke, or a quip, or a gag has to be rammed down our throats.

The CGI is fine, but so great a surfeit gives the drama a weightlessness, making it impossible to invest in. The script…well…looking up Jeff Loveness’ previous writing credits was illuminating. He has written for pop-culture virus Rick & Morty and that influence is everywhere. Nothing is able to sit as a dramatic moment: immediately a joke, or a quip, or a gag has to be rammed down our throats, meaning weightless CGI is only compounded by a script that revels is cynicism rather than in character. This is the bloated Marvel writing formula: schoolboy humour must undercut every dramatic moment. 

Paul Rudd can do this in his sleep, and at times looks like he is. Evangeline Lily is meaningfully absent. Michael Douglas is enjoyable enough as a bumbling octogenarian ant-enthusiast. The real emotional weight of the film comes from Michelle Pfeiffer and Jonathan Majors. Pfeiffer’s Janet is a haunted and scarred heroine, lying to escape a past she cannot outrun. She brings genuine depth and tension to the film, especially in her scenes with Majors. He is masterful as Kang, bringing both a physical and emotional presence that is wonderfully intimidating. He takes the work seriously, giving us a Shakespearean villain who is neither hammy nor po-faced. I’m a little peeved that yet again Marvel is giving us a ‘conflicted villain’ (it would be nice to have a battle between good and evil, black and white, rather than just shades of grey) but Majors is so good he won me over. Overall, it’s a slog and not worth seeing unless one is a Marvel completist.  

2 stars. 

Knock at the Cabin

A close-up of a father holding his daughter close to his face.
Eric and Wen, played by Kristen Cui and Jonathan Groff.

Having sat through the literary assault of the Ant-Man script, I dreaded Knock at the Cabin. I have a soft-spot for M. Night Shyamalan, but his scripts are clanger-city. They’re exercises in verbiage (irony noted) that one endures to enjoy a good spook. I was pleasantly surprised, and silently grateful to co-writers Steve Desmon and Michael Sherman for reining in the worst of the ‘M.Night-isms’.  

It is an efficient chiller. Eric and Andrew have brought their adoptive daughter Wen to a secluded cabin for a holiday. This turns into a hostage situation when four seeming strangers with odd weapons take them hostage and demand the family sacrifice one of their own to stop the coming apocalypse. As the drama unfolds we learn the four home-invaders are just ordinary people who have put their faith in visions that have led them to this action. As time runs out and people die the family is left to weigh the dreadful moral problem before them. 

The film delivers its tension well – Jarin Blaschke’s cinematography elevating mundane conversations to new heights of the uncanny with shallow-focus and tilted cameras. The performances are solid. It’s nice to see Rupert Grint on the big-screen again, and Jonathan Groff brings a compassionate vulnerability to the character of Eric. The standout has to be David Bautista as the de facto leader of the attackers. He plays off his imposing physical presence perfectly, creating a shy and nebbish personality, unfailingly polite and apologetic. It heightens the tension throughout the entire film and the viewer wonders when or even if this hulking mass will lose violent control. 

The film departs from its sources conclusion (2018’s The Cabin at the End of the World) to strike a more obviously tragic but also optimistic and possibly even Christian tone. It’s worth a watch on a rainy afternoon.  

3.5 stars. 

What’s Love Got to Do With It?

A couple stand and smile at a Pakistani wedding celebration.
Shazad Latif and Lily James play Kazim and Cath.

From a dud-script, to a better-than-expected script, to a great rom-com script. What’s Love Got to Do With It? is the first screenplay by Jemima Khan, and it is a terrific debut. Khan presents the tale of Zoe, who tries to boost her career as a documentary film maker by documenting the arranged-marriage of her Pakistani childhood friend Kaz. From the first meeting with the matchmaker to the big day itself Zoe learns about a culture and a practice that is completely alien to her own understanding… but perhaps she’ll learn something about it, and about herself. Is ‘assisted-marriage’ as it is now called ("Oh, like assisted-suicide" Zoe quips) a regressive practice? Is the world of Western dating a freeing alternative? Is there something to learn from allowing commitment to come first, and romance and love to build over time? What lengths will one go to in an effort to please their family? 

It’s just lovely. Really lovely. A laugh-out-loud script that reminded me of Richard Curtis via Gurinder Chadha, a story that takes you from A to B with very few surprises (if you want intrigue don’t see a rom-com) but plenty of smiles, perfectly pitched performances, and a refreshing take on the notions of romance and marriage. All of this is tied together with a sublime turn by Emma Thompson. She steals every scene as Zoe’s politically incorrect and gaffe-prone mother. Every time she was on screen I was somewhere between guffawing and wetting myself with laughter. I’ve seen it twice now and loved it both times, but what’s more important, my wife loved it almost more than I did. If I had one complaint, it is that in a noble effort to conform to the great rom-com formula, Khan doesn’t quite seem to have the courage in her convictions. There is a fascinating, heart-warming, and genuinely positive portrayal of assisted marriage throughout the film…but the laws of rom-coms are such that romance must win out. It’s only a small quibble, and it doesn’t ruin the film; but I was left slightly deflated that this exploration felt incomplete. Still…a small criticism. It’s wonderful. Go and see it!  

4.5 stars. 

The family dynamic  

Three very different films – horror, superhero, rom-com – with a common theme: family. Each film has the family dynamic as a driving force for the narrative. In Knock at the Cabin we have an ‘alternative family’ struggling not only with the trolley-problem on steroids, but also with doubt and constant suspicion. Is this real or a homophobic attack? Is our family chosen because people don’t believe we are a family? What does it mean to be a family that is entirely ‘chosen’? In Ant-Man the supposed emotional drive is Scott’s desperate wish to be part of his daughter’s life and make-up for lost time. There is a wonderful opportunity for tension and conflict when Kang (master of time as well as dimensions) offers to reward Scott by sending him back to before the snap to live out his daughter’s teenage years…squandered by sloppy storytelling, but a fascinating thought. In What’s Love Got to Do with It? Kaz is driven to seeking assisted marriage out of a sense of loyalty to his family, and the wish to begin a new one. 

Each film posits the family structure and the family relationship as fundamental to human life, and the base motivation for human action: fight to reunite family, marry to please family, let the world burn to preserve family. For Christianity this is not a simple issue. Christianity has inherited a great deal from its Jewish roots, and fecundity and family-life is viewed as a good. Family life is presupposed by St Paul when writing advice on how a bishop ought to behave, and the family is often called the ‘aboriginal church’: the simplest unit through which the Christian faith is taught and practised. 

And yet… Jesus refuses to see His mother and brothers and calls those listening to His teachings His mother and brothers; Jesus says that we will not have husbands and wives in the new heaven and new earth; Jesus also says to follow Him rather than bury our father; St Paul consistently argues that a single life devoted to God is to be preferred to marriage; the visions of Revelation suggest our time will be rather taken up with the worship of God (leaving little time to play catch or have a Sunday roast or argue over a game of Monopoly). 

In seeking to heal their familial wounds Scott and Cassie nearly destroy the multiverse; and please don’t believe that it’s their love that saves it…Michael Douglas and his giant ants save the multiverse.

For the Christian, family life is not and cannot be the highest good, for to make anything other than God one’s ultimate good is dangerous folly. In seeking to heal their familial wounds Scott and Cassie nearly destroy the multiverse; and please don’t believe that it’s their love that saves it…Michael Douglas and his giant ants save the multiverse. On a smaller scale, Kaz nearly destines himself to a life of misery in an effort to please his family. M. Night departs from his literary source to give a hopeful ending: rather than sticking as a family in the face of an apocalypse they could avert, Groff’s Eric chooses to sacrifice himself. Like all good things, family ties and family loyalties and family loves can be just as destructive as they are life-giving. 

The truth about the family that Christianity teaches is that the family is a wonderful and holy gift from God insofar as it reflects the goodness of God. Marriage is good and holy because it reflects and symbolises the love that Jesus has for His Church. Procreation is good because it fulfils God’s command for humanity to be fruitful. Family life is good because it is a space in which Christian love is able to flourish.  

As soon as we forget that family life is a reflection of God, family life becomes a burden – and this is so easy to do. We can fetishise family life, demonise or diminish those who do not have a family, ignore those who are happily single; and all of this is wrong and hurtful and damaging. The epitome of the family in the Christian worldview is one where the completely self-giving love, which we see perfectly in Jesus Christ, is allowed to grow and flourish. Oddly enough, this is why Knock at the Cabin has the most Christian depiction of family life. In spite of it being a gay couple with an adopted child (not an uncontroversial idea in the modern Church) it is the one family that demonstrates the principle of sacrificing one’s self for the good of the other. That is what family is – a place where we learn to be willing to die for those we love, and even for those we have never met, and so modelling the Jesus who dies for the sins of the world. 

Short story
Culture
16 min read

The Rat: a new short story

Climbing from containment

Theodore is author of the historical fiction series The Wanderer Chronicles.

A barred window sits in a dark brick wall.
Francesco Ungaro on Unsplash.

Every day he wakes up, he feels something is wrong. 

Is it this place? Or is it him? 

He cannot say. Only that this sensation of wrongness feels a lot like… fear. Like a kind of haunting.  

Who am I?  

Memories with the answer to this question visit his mind like ghosts in the night, but by morning time - if you can call it morning - they have slipped away. Instead the Voice answers for him.  

He calls it morning, but it is only the time when he wakes. The light around him changes little with the passing of time. Always he is cocooned in a soupy gloom. The air is stale and still, a little damp, and yet a trace of sweetness is mixed in with the miasma which has, at times, persuaded him this is comfortable, even pleasant. At least tolerable. The walls around him are the only constant. No, there is also a door - he has seen its hinges but he knows it is locked fast because the Voice has told him so. Apart from these, there is little else to look upon except what the Voice sometimes shows him through an opening which it calls the Window. It opens only when there is something to see, otherwise it too is shut fast.  

The chains of course are another constant, he remembers. He feels their weight when he moves about. And for this reason, he doesn’t trouble himself to move far. Some days, not at all. They make him feel weary almost before he has begun. It is useless anyway; the Voice has told him. It is his lot to exist in this place, so he can only make the best of it for whatever time he has left. It is the lot of the Voice to look after him. 

He lifts his head, sniffs the stale air, scratches at an ear. 

At once, the Voice sounds from its aperture high on the cell wall. ’Good morning, Rat! How are we today?’ 

‘Same,’ he mumbles into his paws. 

‘Why, that is excellent! The same is good. The same is the best one can ever expect. The same is life.’ 

‘So you have told me.’ 

‘Because it is the truth. And however ugly or grim, the truth is never to be shunned. Have I not always told you this?’ 

For a longish moment, the Rat does not answer. 

‘I said: have I not always told you this?’ 

  

‘You have,’ the Rat murmurs. 

‘Honestly, sometimes I wonder whether you actually listen to all that I have to say. Else I wouldn’t have to repeat myself. But at least one of us must do their duty. So, to be sure, Rat, I had better remind you once more, just as I do with all those under my care.’ 

The Voice begins to speak in that quick, forceful manner the Rat has come to accept. As if nothing it says is above the mundane and therefore worth dwelling upon, and yet all is also irrefutably and obviously true.   

The Rat knows the litany well.  

First, and above all, he is a rat. And as a rat, he belongs in this dank, dark place. It is where rats of his kind have always dwelled. Everyone knows rats carry disease. Everyone knows rats have no useful value. No purpose, no meaning, and therefore they should have no voice, above a nasty little squeaking, because after all, no one wants to hear what a rat has to say. The Maker has ordered it so.   

‘Thus is the verdict,’ the Voice concludes. ‘And yet, in his mercy, the Maker tolerates your continued existence. That is why he created this place and appointed me guardian over you. To care for you, even though it is more than you deserve. To feed you enough to keep your belly full, even though such provision comes at great expense. And to keep you entertained, even though, Maker knows, such effort is a downright extravagance.’ 

The Voice comes to the end of its discourse. And as always, the moment it is finished, a small shutter opens in the most foetid corner of the place and a platter of food is shoved through. The shutter closes at once with a snap. 

Bracing himself to the weight of his chains, the Rat crawls over to the platter and has a sniff. It is the same as every day. A bolus of food which in the dim shadows forms no distinct shape or colour. Its texture is neither hard nor soft. It gives off no smell that could appeal or repel. He eats it down, as he does every day. The first taste of it upon his tongue is sweet - the promise of something good. But by the time he swallows it down, the sweetness is gone and what remains is a solid feeling in his belly, at once heavy and bitter. The Voice has told him this is Nourishment. This keeps him alive - which is his only principle, his only goal. And so he knows tomorrow he will eat again. 

The platter lies empty for a while; it will be taken when he sleeps. Next will come the Window. Each day he has not long to wait. The Voice tells him this is so that his mind is not inert. ‘For an empty mind is a dangerous thing,’ the Voice has said, ‘into which all kind of falsities are wont to slip. It is for me to protect you from such hazards. By filling it.’ 

The Rat moves over towards the Window. He cannot see the Window; he cannot see very much at all. But by instinct now, he knows where it will appear. He almost knows what it will show. Each day is different - yes, the only difference in his drab world - but there is a kind of regularity to what it shows, too. And in any case, it leaves him with the same feeling whatever he sees within its frame. Some things draw from him the flickers of excitement, others might make him laugh if only the voice the Maker gave him were capable of forming that sound. Still others evoke in him something like desire, and yet even this only swells to a blunt sort of prurience, an itch barely worth scratching. Mostly though, he feels a kind of frustration which almost rises to anger. But not anger that demands action. Just enough to feel a slight twist in his heart which never fully unwinds. And so his heart is by now quite contorted. And this frustration is the feeling he is left with each day. This frustration is at least a feeling. And as the Voice has told him: ‘Feeling is important. Feeling means you are alive.’ 

But the Rat is mistaken. Because this day is not the same as all the others after all: 

Before the Window appears, all at once he hears another sound. A faint scratching coming from the door. He looks over - although of course, in the gloom, he cannot expect to see much. But to his surprise, he does see, quite clearly, a small creature squeezing itself, with some considerable effort, under the foot of the door. The outlines of it are distinct. As if it carries its own light with it, since nothing else within the Rat’s cell could illumine it so well. It is a mouse. 

Bold as you like, the mouse comes right up to where he lies. And after regarding him with bright, blinking eyes for a moment or two, it says: ‘Wake up.’  

‘I am awake,’ replies the Rat. 

‘No, indeed, you are not, my friend. I say again, awake!’ This time the mouse speaks with real force, in a voice that belies his little size. 

The Rat is now confused as well as surprised by this intrusion. ’Who are you? What are you doing here?’ 

‘I have been sent to help you. Who I am is of no import when laid against who you are.’ 

‘What can you mean? I am of no importance. I am a rat and this is where I belong. It is you, Mouse, who needs explaining.’ 

‘No, no. I say again, no!’ 

‘No?’ 

‘You are no rat. That is why I am sent to you.’ 

‘What folly is this? I am no rat?’ And for the first time, he experiences the undoubted pleasure of real indignation. ‘Are you mad? Have you lost your senses? See, here are my paws. There is my tail.’ 

And yet, even as he proffers them, he is surprised to see the shadow of his smooth little hands seem now not quite so smooth and altogether swollen, nor is the length or girth of his hairless tail quite as he remembers it. But he dismisses these as mere tricks of the gloom and his own agitation at so abrupt and strange an interruption. 

‘If I told you what you truly are,’ answers the mouse, ‘you would neither understand nor believe me. Only this must you accept: you do not belong here. And where you do belong desperately needs you. So I have come to wake you up.’ 

‘Again this idea that I am asleep,’ returns the Rat, scratching confusedly at his nose. ‘As if you are some apparition in a dream—‘ 

‘Not asleep, but enchanted,’ interrupts the mouse. ‘Enthralled and silenced. It is your voice that is needed, and your heart.’ 

‘My voice?’ squeaks the Rat. ‘What possible use can anyone have for my voice? And anyway I am not silenced. I could speak as much as I wish. I just have nothing much to say.’ 

The mouse seems distracted then. His little ears twitch and turn. ‘Quickly, we have not time to bandy words. Only rise and follow me.’ 

‘Follow you where?’ scoffs the Rat. ‘See, I’m thrice the size of you and cannot go by the way you came in. This cell is sealed to me. Besides which, these chains—’ 

‘You will see,’ urges the mouse, impatient with his protestations. ‘The door is not truly barred. Those chains do not truly hold you. Indeed there is no prison. I say again, rise. Come and you will see all that you are meant for and all that is meant for you.’ 

But before any more can be said or done, a sound suddenly fills the dingy place: ‘Is that you, Mouse, you troublesome little beast?’ It is the Voice - and far sharper and angrier than the Rat has ever heard it.  

The Rat shrinks back against the wall. But the mouse lifts his nose defiantly. ‘It is not I who is trouble-maker here, but you, Spell-Spinner. Truth-Twister. Usurper.’ 

‘Usurper?’ The Voice chuckles, a languorous, malevolent sound. ‘Is not this my kingdom? Are not you the intruder here?’ 

‘You have no kingdom and no authority but which you have stolen through your lies and deception.’ 

  

‘Lies? Deception? I tell no lies. I offer no deception. It is you and your…your vermin kind who stir up trouble inviting people to believe that which is not. You conjure pretty dreams to lure weak minds into your thrall out of the mere imaginings of a diseased brain.’ 

‘You lie as easily as you breathe,’ returns the mouse, glaring about him.  

‘Come now, where is the lie?’ soothes the Voice from its aperture. 

‘All around us. This very place.’ 

‘Nonsense. This is real. I only show those who dwell here what is true, the better for them to accept their reality. I - we - who are given charge of this place know that the first sign of a mind turning to disease is the thought that there must be something else. That this is not exactly where they belong and who they are—’ 

The mouse appears to lose patience then and turns back to the Rat. ‘Listen not to this voice a moment longer, but harken only to me. Awake, arise. Follow me. Come, we must away.’ 

And so surprised at the steady authority in the mouse’s words, the Rat find himself uncoiling from his cringing corner and indeed getting to his feet, so that he begins to follow the mouse towards the door, despite the weight of his chains, and though he knows it is bolted and barred. They are nearly at it when another voice, much closer, cries out of the shadows: ‘Stop where you are, Rat!’ 

Terrified, for an instant, the Rat obeys. He looks back and see a far larger shadow moving in the gloom now. And before he can even wonder whence it has appeared, the shadow leaps and in two quick bounds overtakes the two little rodents and stands between them and the door.  

The Rat sees now it is a cat. An especially large and especially black cat, with long silvered whiskers and a coat that is soft and shining as velvet. 

‘I warned you what would happen if you came back, little beast,’ the cat says, addressing the mouse. ‘There is none more dangerous nor more harmful in all my kingdom than you.’ 

The mouse, brave little creature, stands back upon its hind legs, drawing itself up to its fullest height, which is by no means saying much against the overbearing presence of the cat. ‘It is not your kingdom,’ hisses the mouse in defiance. ‘And even though you strike me down, others will come in my place.’ 

‘Oh, I hope so,’ says the cat, an insidious smile in his voice. ‘For I do so enjoy a little nap on a full belly.’ 

And with that, the cat pounces. There is a brief scuffle in the gloom, a solitary squeal, then the cat is sitting back on its haunches. For a moment he paws at a shapeless lump on the ground before him. Then with sudden relish, he falls upon the wretched mouse, gobbling it up from nose to tail until there is no sign that it has ever been there. But for the flicker of the cat’s pink tongue, licking the last of its blood from his lips. 

Sated, he turns back to the Rat.  

‘Sometimes, Rat, it becomes necessary for you to see me as I really am,’ he says, his tone languid now. ‘But that is not altogether regrettable. Now you can see I am telling the truth. Now you can have no doubt. You see that I, at least, am real. Real enough to rid us both of that meddlesome brute.’ 

‘But…but what he said,’ the Rat dares to whisper, though still gripped with shock, and not a little terror, at the strange turn of events. ‘Can there be nothing to them? A madman may see a distortion. But only a distortion of something that is there—’ 

‘Listen to me,’ the cat quickly hissed, standing over the Rat. ‘And heed me well. Have I not thought only of your good, Rat? Do I not give you food to ease your hunger? Do you not live secure and well in this place? By the stars, I even keep you entertained! Is all this not enough for you? How would a rat like you fare in any other place, even if such a place did exist?’  

To this, the Rat has no answer. The cat gives a little chuckle. ‘Quite so. Now, the little mouse is done with. And with him, his mad imaginings. We must stop them from infecting any others, for it will only lead to distress and dissatisfaction. This is not my wish for you,’ the cat purrs silkily, and as he does, a sort of drowsiness starts to creep over the Rat. ‘Be happy with your lot. He who can master this can master all. Even you, Rat, can be master of this life, if you do.’ 

The cat drops to its paws, its yellow eyes now level with the Rat’s, set in a glare as hard as stone. His nose so close, the Rat can smell the mouse’s blood upon his breath. ‘Forget the mouse. When all is said, he was nothing but a dainty little morsel for me to eat.’ 

Something in the cruelty of the purring voice just then, in the way the cat licks its lips lasciviously once more - something in the memory of the little mouse who, for all his strange urgings, clearly meant kindness towards him - stirs in the Rat’s heart more than regret, more even than fear. A sudden, white hot rage grips him dispelling in an instant the drowsiness that has come over him. And before he knows quite what he is doing, the Rat raises his little paw and swipes the cat smack across his pink nose with all the force he can muster.  

He knows it can be but a futile gesture which will only bring him trouble, but to his amazement, the cat is flung across the cell, hitting the wall with such force that he falls limp and unmoving to the floor. For a moment, bewildered, the Rat thinks the cat is dead, or else he himself is dreaming. But then slowly the cat picks itself up, shakes itself, casts him a final look of slavish terror, then flees, disappearing through some unseen hatch as quickly as he had come. 

The Rat looks down in wonder at his paw, mystified at the strength in it. 

And yet, what he sees now is not the familiar pink pads of a rat’s paw, with the fragile little nails that he is used to, but something altogether bigger, stronger, fiercer. Covered in hair, with black claws long as his tail. Astonished, he gets to his feet. And so doing, his whole body feels heavier, and yet holds within itself a new strength to move. The weight of his chains, he notices not at all. 

He turns now to the door, suddenly determined to discover what lies beyond its bolts and bars. But when he goes to it and raises his paw to push against it and test its resistance, his paw goes right through it. There is no resistance. There is nothing there. And all at once, the walls and floor and low cramped ceiling of his cell melt away until he finds himself standing in a new sort of darkness. One that feels expansive, that has no limits.  

No, not quite darkness. There is a source of dim light now giving some shape to the things around him. It seems far off though, and high. He wants to go to it. He takes a step forward, and as he does, he is suddenly overcome with a violent choking. He drops his head, gasping for breath, his great back heaving with strain as something jagged and hard rises in his gorge. And next moment, he is vomiting up something into the soft ground at his feet. At once he feels lighter, he feels his breath coming more freely in thick rasping pants. There at his feet lies an ugly object indeed. It is a kind of misshapen metal ball covered in a multitude of sharp spikes, and he wonders in disgust that such a thing could be lodged unknown in his throat for so long. 

But it is out now, and he feels all the better for it. 

Now he walks towards the faint glow above and beyond him. The ground is soft beneath his paws.  He seems to be climbing through a landscape which he can see but dimly at first. There is a great openness above him. In the growing light, shapes take form and with them the memory of things long, long forgotten. Maybe things he never really knew but only dreamed of once. Alien and yet at once familiar. Trees and rocks and other forms stirring in the gloom. There is much he cannot see, but he is not afraid. Indeed he feels no fear at all now, only a kind of growing expectation, a growing certainty of what he must do.  

And so he climbs and climbs. 

At last he sees the line of a ridge above him. He sets himself to the task of scaling this last, highest hill. And though he walks in shadow still, the sky above him is filling with light. It turns in colour from grey to white to coral pink. And as he pads the last few paces to the summit, a feeling swells inside of him, a long hidden explosion of sound and emotion. The very cry of his heart. 

He is there now. He looks out across an endless landscape below him. 

And as the first rays of a mighty dawn race over the distant purple hills, the lion’s roar rings out across the land. At the sound of it, all the sleeping animals awake and prick up their ears. 

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