As usual, it was the giraffe who saw the visitors first. Mr. Giraffe had sharp eyes to go with his long neck. When he shouted, all the animals in the Forest always stopped to listen.

‘What’s that? Mr. Giraffe says that three big cats are coming across the plain towards the Forest. What can they want? Has anybody told Prince Tiger about them?’

A little monkey squealed. ‘Big cats? What – big pussy cats?’

‘No, silly,’ chided his mother. ‘BIG cats. Keep close to me. Mr. Giraffe says that one of them is a very old black panther, with fur that is nearly grey.’

‘I can see him,’ shouted another monkey, ‘and the second is a cheetah. What have they come for?’

Deep down in the Forest, the elephants heard the shouting. Old Mr. Elephant, the oldest of them, lifted his head. ‘I have a strange feeling that they might be bringing us all some Good News.’

The monkey shouted again. ‘The third big cat is an animal I’ve never seen before.’

‘It’s a jaguar!’ called down an eagle that was soaring overhead.

Old Mr. Elephant lifted his head in surprise. ‘A jaguar? How on earth did he get here? Don’t jaguars come from…?’

Old Mr. Elephant’s voice was drowned as all the animals started cheering the visitors in excitement. The three strangers walked into the first clearing of the Forest, and sat down wearily. At the same moment, there was a stir on the opposite side of the clearing as a dark pack of hyenas pushed their way roughly past the crowd of animals that was gathering. Some rhinoceroses followed, their tall horns like spears. Then came a couple of stern-looking elephants. Finally through the middle of the hyenas stepped a huge tiger with a crown of flowers on his head.

‘Well?’ Silence fell as he growled and stared around. ‘Why have I been disturbed?’

The first visitor, the old panther, stood up gracefully and looked at the tiger. ‘We have come to find the ruler of the Forest,’ he said quietly.

‘So now you have found me,’ said Prince Tiger.

‘We see that you were born a prince, sir. Yet we seek not a prince but a king.’

‘A king?’ Prince Tiger’s jaw dropped.

‘We have come from afar to seek the One who has been born King over the Forest.’

Everyone jumped in surprise. There was such amazement that half of the monkeys fell out of their tree onto some porcupines. That created even more of a fuss. By the time order had been restored, Prince Tiger was growling furiously. ‘Who is this King? Is he a tiger? I shall challenge him to battle!’

One of the stern-looking elephants who had come with Prince Tiger answered him. ‘The King who is to come will not be a tiger. The new King of the Forest can only be an elephant. Although there are now many animals in the Forest, the elephants are its ancient lords, and only an elephant could rule it.’

‘Why do we need a King?’ asked someone.

The elephants glanced nervously at Prince Tiger. ‘The coming King is the One whom the elephants believe Lord Lion Himself will send to bring peace to the Forest forever.’

Prince Tiger snorted. ‘Lord Lion will send a king? Where will he be born?’ he snapped.

The elephants conferred. ‘In the ancient sayings it is told that he will be born in the city where our Bravest King, the second king of the elephants, came from.’

Prince Tiger thought for a moment. He had an ugly gleam in his eyes, and a cunning expression. He muttered to the hyenas at his side, then nodded to the strangers.

‘Go and find your new King,’ he commanded. ‘When you have found him, come back here and tell me, for I should like to visit him too.’ With an imperious snort, Prince Tiger turned sharply on his heel and walked away, pausing only for a moment to watch the strangers as they, too, disappeared through the Forest.

When the other animals were left alone, there was a hush. It was broken by the voice of a hippopotamus who was wallowing in a mud-pool at the side of the clearing. ‘A King over all the Forest? Why should we need a new King? And if we do, why should it be an elephant? The elephants may once have ruled the Forest, but the Forest isn’t filled only with elephants nowadays.’

An antelope spoke. ‘In any case, how can we have a King over us all? No animal could rule all of the others. The only One who can rule us all is Lord Lion, who isn’t an animal like us and doesn’t live here in the Low Forest, but in His own High Forest in the sky.’

A young giraffe wasn’t so sure. ‘I know Lord Lion rules over us all. But we can’t see Him and I’m not really sure that He knows who I am. It would be nice to have a King who you could see and talk to, even if you had to make an appointment to see him.’

Old Mr. Elephant looked thoughtful. ‘Somehow I have the feeling that if we had a true King, you wouldn’t need to make an appointment to see him. He would know when you needed to talk to him.’

On the clearing floor near Old Mr. Elephant, a shrew spoke shrilly. ‘I wouldn’t mind being ruled by an elephant king. I like Old Mr. Elephant, here, for example. All I would ask is that he would not tread on me.’

Old Mr. Elephant looked down. ‘I’m glad I have at least one friend here. Yet also, I have a feeling that if we had a true King, it might not seem very important what sort of animal he was. He might be born among us as an elephant like all the elephants before him, but I suspect that he might turn out to be as much lion as elephant in the end.’

‘More lion?’ The hippopotamus was astonished. ‘How could he be lion at all? There are no lions in the Forest, and never have been. Lord Lion made the Forest that way from the beginning. All ordinary lions which I ever heard of live far from the Forest on the plain, where they hurt and kill animals that do not live in the Forest. We don’t want a real lion in the Forest; lions are dangerous.’

‘And Lord Lion is more dangerous than any ordinary lion!’ said Mr. Elephant. ‘But I did not mean that the new King would be a lion, but that he might prove to be a lion by nature. Especially if it is true that Lord Lion Himself has sent him.’

The hippo protested. ‘Either he would be like a wild lion who would hurt and kill us; or he would have to be like Lord Lion. But that’s impossible. There is only one Lord Lion. If what you say is true, the new King’s coming can only be very bad news.’

‘Oh, no.’ Old Mr. Elephant shook his head firmly. ‘I see it now. The new King is a good King. But He is also a Lion King.’

‘Then he must be Lord Lion Himself,’ spluttered the hippo. ‘The Great Lion Himself must be coming to the Forest. We shall all die; if Lord Lion Himself comes to the Forest, the whole Forest and everything in it will be burnt to ashes. None of us could possibly live in Lord Lion’s own presence.’ The hippo’s splutter was not just one of indignation, it was also one of mud, which went all over Old Mr. Elephant’s face. Patiently he wiped the mud away.

‘Lord Lion loves us; He would never destroy us. No, the new King may look like an elephant, but he will be as much Lion as Lord Lion Himself. But he will not be Lord Lion.’

‘How can that be possible?’

Old Mr. Elephant nodded his huge head slowly. ‘That must be the way of it. I thought it would turn out to be Good News. It’s quite simple. Lord Lion has a Son!’

A snake in the grass gasped. ‘A Son? Coming to us in the form of an elephant? Surely not! And if so, what could He possibly be coming here for?’

‘We cannot tell. But if the Great Lion’s Son is here in the Forest, even in disguise, He will be to us all that His Father is. The Forest is His by right; along with His Father, He Himself must have made it. And He cares for it too: neither wishes to burn us up. Our lives will never be the same again.’

‘Nor will His,’ muttered a gorilla. ‘When Prince Tiger finds that the elephant child is the Great Lion’s Son he will kill Him.’

Old Mr. Elephant frowned. ‘I don’t think so. I can foresee that one day the Great Lion’s Son will face death in the Forest. But He will not be murdered secretly. His death will involve all of us.’

The hippo was appalled. ‘Speak for yourself!’ she said. ‘I’m not a killer. Those wicked hyenas, I could believe anything of them. But I would never hurt the baby Forest King.’

Old Mr. Elephant looked sadly at the hippo. ‘I think we all hurt Him and His Father all the time. We may not all be killers. But none of us leaves His Forest the way He made it. You, Mrs. Hippo, churn up the Forest River and turn the grass into mud. I pull up the trees and tear them down to eat the leaves. We all need His forgiveness. We all need showing how we were meant to live.’

The gorilla thumped his chest angrily and let his head sink down in despair. ‘Then we had all better go down to the Forest River and drown ourselves,’ he growled. ‘This elephant child’s death is BAD news for us all. When His Son dies, the Great Lion will punish us all and destroy the Forest. If our lives cause the new King’s death―’

‘Then we cannot help ourselves,’ said Old Mr. Elephant. ‘That is why He has made a way to help us. No, the Great Lion’s Son has come to provide a way of escape for us, even if He has to die to bring it. And even if He does die, I am sure it will not be the end of Him! The true reward for our faults should be our deaths.

‘But the Great Lion has given us a great gift – His Son. His Son’s death can be for our deaths; and if we share in His death, perhaps we can also share in His life. If we give our lives to the new King, then He will change us into new creatures, ones like Him that will harm no Forest He puts us into. Now that He has come, the King commands that each one of us will obey and put our trust in Him.’

The gorilla looked up suddenly ‘So the new King’s birth is really—’

‘GOOD news?’ Mr. Elephant smiled broadly. ‘Yes, it certainly is!’

(George B. Hill, Aug 2001)