It could have happened that way. But, Anna didn't believe it. "Just being stubborn," she told Piedmont as she risked a skewered finger, rescuing the box of slides from his paws. She replaced it with another toy, a plastic ball with a bell encased inside.

The cat would have nothing to do with it. Anna had ruined everything. With a flick of his sausage tail, he jumped down.

"Be that way," Anna said peevishly. She dropped the next slide into the viewer and held it up to her eye. One of the last shots on the roll: a picture of the paw prints she'd found behind Sheila in the mud. If Anna remembered correctly the two sets had been about a yard apart. It was hard to tell from the picture and she wished she'd had the presence of mind to put a pen or a dime in the shot at the time; something to give a size reference. The prints themselves were cookie-cutter perfect in the smooth surface of the fine-grained silt.

Anna put the second slide of the prints in and stared at it unthinkingly. With an uncluttered mind, the obvious became obvious. The difference between front and hind paw prints was minimal but she had spent a lot of hours with her eyes on the ground studying lion sign. The hind paw's central pad was more heart-shaped, the sides convex rather than concave. In these pictures both sets, front and back, were identical- even to the crease marks on the pads themselves.

Both sets of prints, the front and the hind, were forepaws.

"That can't be right…" she whispered, pushing her eye closer to the light source. She changed slides; studied the first one again. There were no prints from hind paws.

A lion with four front paws.

A lion that walked on its hands.

A lion eleven feet long that kept its hind paws on the stone.

A lion with its ass in a sling.

Anna listed the absurdities. "When is a Lion not a Lion?" she said aloud, putting her confusion into riddle formula.