PRINCE IN EXILE (111 page)

Jatayu was coming apart, coming undone. In moments, it would be dead, killed ironically by the sheer act of flight. It felt its life ebb, its heart slow, and the moment of its death approaching as inevitably as a stone wall into which it was about to crash. 

In that instant, Jatayu’s waning spirit sent up a prayer to the only deity it truly worshipped: Garuda. Lord of winged beings.
Lord
, it prayed,
grant me this one last thing
,
for the sake of Rama who gave me the opportunity to redeem myself
. 

And as it prayed, it exerted one final effort, gritting its teeth and pushing downwards. Even had it been young and strong and in its prime, it could never have stopped the Pushpak. The strongest pair of wings could not halt the hurtling flight of this celestial chariot. But Jatayu did not intend to slow it down or even stop its forward progress, but simply to change its direction. 

At the instant that Jatayu pushed, it felt something break loose. It pushed down, hoping that somehow it might be able to alter the vahan’s course by enough margin to cause it to strike the trees and hopefully slow it down somewhat. Jatayu wasn’t sure what that might achieve. But it was the only thing it could think of to do and pushed down with all its might, feeling, as it did so, its great heart reach the limit of its endurance. And despite this gargantuan heart-bursting effort, the vahan budged not a whit. Jatayu might as well have picked the highest peak in the Himavat range and pushed down on it with the intention of shoving it a hundred yards underground. 

And then an astonishing thing happened. 

The earth itself rose to meet the vahan. 

*** 

Mere moments had passed since Rama’s last cry, and Sita had intuitively sensed that he had been dislodged by that last overturning. She also thought that the vahan was no longer hovering but had begun to move in flight. She could not tell how fast or in which direction, for there was none of the accompanying sensation of movement, but she could see Ravana, standing with his arms raised to either side, all six of his palms pressed flat against the top and walls of the vehicle. All ten pairs of eyes were shut, as if he were using all his shakti to control the vahan to make good their escape. From the way the cords of muscle stood out on his neck and shoulders and arms, she guessed that he was succeeding. 

She heard the scrabbling sound of something striking the top of the vahan and her heart lurched with hope. Rama! But as she listened to the sound of the wind ripping at whatever or whomever had landed on the top of the flying vehicle, she knew it couldn’t be him. She could hear the sound the wind made, from which she could guess at the speed of their flight, as well as the object that was upon them. 

Ravana remained in his trance-like state. She was glad for that. Her mouth had been sealed by the vahan, a flap extruding itself to cover her mouth, pressing against her lips hard enough to make her teeth and jaw ache. But her prayer had been answered once by mother earth, and she would not give up now. 

She heard a shrill cry from overhead, so close that had her hands been free and the top of this golden coffin not sealed shut, she could have reached up and touched the crier. Jatayu. She recognised the man-vulture at once.
He must be holding on to the vahan
,
seeking to halt its course
. 

Help him
,
mother
, she prayed.
Give him your strength
.
Help him stop this vehicle
’
s progress
. 

To her right, Ravana’s eyes flew open. ‘Silence! Cease your foolish praying. Even your earth mother can’t help you now—’ 

Something changed in the vahan’s progress. She could not actually feel it, but she saw it reflected in several pairs of Ravana’s eyes: a flickering disbelief. He roared with rage, pressing his hands harder against the vahan’s walls, pouring his strength into its substance. 

But that brief instant of distraction had done its damage. A terrible grinding noise filled the tiny chamber, deafening Sita. And then a dead silence descended. 

We
’
ve stopped
! 

TWENTY 

Lakshman cried out his brother’s name as Rama fell from the sky onto the roof of their thatched hut. Rama struck the flimsy roof, meant only to keep out the rain and sun and wind, and it shattered like dry twigs. The entire hut collapsed in a cloud of dust and splinters and flying straw. The dervish of wind and earth had died down but the last swirls of wind caught the debris of the hut and twirled them a few times. Lakshman shielded his eyes with his arm and plunged into the shattered wreck, seeking out Rama. 

He found him, shaken and bruised but unhurt, clambering to his feet. He clutched Rama’s arms, then clung to him. Around them, the wind died out as suddenly as it had begun. An eerie silence descended over their part of the jungle. 

Lakshman felt Rama’s heart pounding against his own. Rama released himself from the embrace and slumped back, moaning, whether in pain or chagrin, it was hard to tell. 

‘What now?’ he asked imploringly. 

Rama looked around, as lost as Lakshman. Sunlight streamed around them, cut into odd shadows by the standing bamboos and debris of the destroyed hut. 

‘Which way did the thing travel?’ Rama asked at last. ‘Southwest?’ 

Lakshman shrugged. ‘I thought it veered east suddenly. It moved strangely, it was hard to—’ 

Rama sprang up. ‘Did you hear that?’ 

Lakshman gained his feet. A strange thumping sound, like a heavy mace, or an elephant’s foot, striking the ground. He turned, pointing. ‘It came from that direction.’ South by southwest. 

‘Quickly then,’ Rama said. 

They leaped out of the ruins of their house and began to run through the jungle. 

*** 

The crash of the Pushpak had shaken the last breath out of Jatayu. The bird-beast lay on its back on the ground, and stared up at the clear, blue sky. Its wings were shattered, every bone in its feeble body felt as if it had been broken twice, and the blood that seeped from its broken body into the ground smelled rich and potent, like a blood-perfume worn by a rakshasi on her wedding night. It tried to rouse itself but could not. It had been flung several hundred yards from the celestial vahan, crashing through a dozen bamboo stalks before coming to this last resting place. Even if it roused itself, what could it do? It did not know how severely the crash had damaged the Pushpak, if at all. And Ravana was no mere rakshasa. He would not be stopped so easily. At the best of times, Jatayu was no match for the lord of asuras. Now, it could barely dare to laugh at the thought of matching talons with him. Yet it must do something, must it not? What could it do in this shattered state? 

A bunch of tiny shadows passed across the sky, tiny scratchmarks on a cerulean slate. 

My kin
, Jatayu called, using the super-high-pitched birdvoice that no other species could hear.
Brothers and sisters of birdkind
,
heed me now in this
,
my last moment
.
Gather around this spot
,
mark where the demonlord
’
s vehicle lies
,
and fetch Rama and Lakshman here swiftly before Ravana departs
.
Go
! 

As suddenly as if it had unleashed a dam, the sky filled with the shadows of wheeling birds of every kind, shape, size, and colour. A symphony of birdcry filled the world as the clear blue sky was darkened by millions upon millions of its kith and kin. 

A howl of fury tore through that symphony, and a moment later, the portion of sky immediately above Jatayu darkened momentarily as an object appeared above. Even in its broken state, Jatayu did not mistake it for a bird. It was Yamaraj, Lord of Death, come in the form of a ten-headed six-armed rakshasa. 

‘Once, I would have made you king of your kind,’ Ravana said, his arms flexing and tensing. ‘Now, I will make you slave of the winged denizens of the nethermost level of hell.’ 

As Ravana bent over, Jatayu sent one final thought winging outwards.
Go
,
my lady Sita
,
flee
! 

Then a pain so exquisite, it was almost relief, blossomed in Jatayu’s breast and spread outwards, filling its consciousness with a blinding yet soothing white light. Its bleary eyes drank in a last glimpse of sky, then closed forever. 

*** 

Sita’s bonds were free. She did not know how it had happened, but she guessed it had something to do with the fact that Ravana was gone, the top of the gold box was open to the sky, and the earth had seeped into the vahan and insinuated itself into the gaps between her skin and the gold metal clasps that had held her prisoner. Could mere mud crack open bonds of gold? She did not know or care. She was free and that was all that mattered. 

She climbed out of the vahan and found herself staring up a long, sloping corridor to the sky. That was how it appeared at first. It took her a moment to understand that it was the groove in the earth the vahan had made when it crashed, the deep furrow caused by its ploughing into the ground at tremendous speed. Walls of earth rose up on either side of the embedded vahan, yards high, and the furrow down which it had ploughed to this depth sloped up to the blue sky across which countless birds were wheeling like some immense exodus at the last dusk at the end of time. 

She clambered out of the vahan and began to crawl up the furrow. It was slow going, for the earth was loose and crumbled beneath her hands and knees, but for some reason she felt unafraid and calm. It did not concern her that Ravana might return at any instant. The contact with the mud soothed her, allowed her to concentrate on only the task at hand. She climbed steadily towards the sky. 

The symbolism of the moment did not escape her. Her name was Sita, literally ‘furrow’ in Sanskrit. She had been so named because her father Janak had found her in a clay cot placed in a deep furrow in the single field which he himself ploughed each year. All her life, she had heard the legend whispered around her: that she was the daughter of Prithvi, mother earth herself, given to Janak of Mithila to raise and safekeep for some mystical reason known only to devas and devis. At this moment, as she clambered up a deep furrow in the earth, she felt she could believe the legend without question or doubt. Of course she was daughter to Prithvi. Why else had the earth literally risen to save her from that demon’s clutches, not once but twice this morning? 

Now
,
Mother
, she voiced silently,
help me escape him and return to my Rama
.
Help your daughter
. 

*** 

They could not help but notice the birds. Once only had they seen such a gathering of the winged beasts in the jungle, and that time their friend Jatayu had explained it was due to a flux in the migration patterns. A change that occurred every seventy or eighty years, when the birds adjusted their flights to the subtle variations in the earth’s movement. Neither Rama nor Lakshman had understood what that meant, but they understood enough to know that there were things even the wisest of seers might not be intimately acquainted with. Such as the flight patterns of birds. 

But this, this was no migratory flux. This was a disturbance in the very life of the birds of the jungle. And that disturbance must surely be related to the thing they pursued. To the resounding thud they had heard moments earlier. 

This time, their flight through the jungle was unimpeded by sorcerously raised thickets or curtainwalls of vine or shape-shifting rakshasas disguised as golden stags. They flew across the gnarled forest floor, bare feet barely touching the earth for an instant, every ounce of energy focussed on the act of running. 

Above them, the birds cried and called and wheeled and dove, the sky darkened by their sheer numbers. At times, Rama felt as if they were speaking to him and Lakshman. He caught birdsounds that sounded so like his own name that he felt sorely tempted to stop to listen better, or at least to ask Lakshman if he had heard the same sounds. But he could not, would not, stop running. 

But then, a bird flew down,
beneath
the dense overhanging canopy of trees, and, adjusting its passage to their running, flew overhead, keeping perfect pace with them. Now, Rama knew that his instincts had been correct. No bird would naturally do such a thing. He saw the bird duck and dive and veer, over branches, under branches, through foliage, around trunks, risking its delicate self beyond reason, matching their sprinting pace. 

‘What?’ he cried, still without ceasing or slowing his run. ‘Speak!’ His voice sounded strange and foolish to his own ears. Yet, even as he spoke, he felt instinctively that he had done the right thing.