PRINCE IN EXILE (63 page)

He sighed and rose from the disarrayed pallet, strewn across the floor by his tossing and turning. His body was wreathed with sweat, his ang-vastra soaked through and through. He took it off and wound it around his arm as he went out of the hut. He was in the habit of washing his own clothes after sandhyavandana. If he could stop Lakshman from doing it; Lakshman seemed to do everything so quickly and efficiently, Rama had to make an effort to ensure he did his own chores first, or they would be done by Lakshman in no time. He smiled. No wonder he was having guilty dreams. He was still living like a king here, in this rustic kingdom of Chitrakut. Lakshman made sure of that. 

The late-afternoon sunshine was bright and piercing after the relative dimness of the hut. It took him a moment to accept that the sun was angled much lower than he had expected. When he realised how low it had travelled, he shook his head in disbelief. He had slept away the whole afternoon! It was the mangoes he had eaten before noon. Three of them, large and golden and bursting with ecstasy, their flesh dripping sweet sticky juice with every bite. He rubbed his belly, sighing. At this rate he would grow as fat as his father. 

‘Sita?’ 

He walked around the hut, expecting her to be in the garden, planting some new herb or vegetable. The garden was her pet project these days. It was coming along quite nicely, he was pleased to say. One good monsoon and they would be able to harvest their own food right here in their own back yard, instead of having to walk all the way upriver to that patch half a yojana away. And then he would probably grow even fatter without that exercise! He would have to start waking Lakshman at dawn and go running through the woods every morning, if only to keep his body fit. Not that he was really in any danger of fattening up - his stomach was still as firm as a drum - but it would give him something to do. It felt strange, not having done anything for so many months. Rest was good. But so was work. He craved something to do. Even hunting. At least it kept one’s senses sharpened. Perhaps he could coax Sita into going on a hunt. There were far too many wild boar in the hills to the north. It wouldn’t hurt to bring down a few, aid the natural cycle and balance the population. 

He stopped short. 

He had completed a full circuit of their property. Sita was nowhere in sight. 

‘Sita?’ he called out. 

After a moment, the answer came from behind him, on the wind. ‘Here, my love.’ 

He turned to see her walking towards him, coming from the direction of the woods. She looked radiant and alive, her cheeks flushed, her face lit up with a vitality he hadn’t seen for days … or months, actually. She looked as she had the day of the swayamvara in Mithila. Like a woman in search of her own destiny, and if she didn’t like the first choice she saw, she would garland the next one, or the one after … 

‘Rama,’ she said breathlessly. She had been running. 

She caught his hand and swung him around, laughing. He swung around with her, smiling too. The wheeling made them dizzy and they fell to the ground, rolling on the soft kusa grass of their front yard. She pulled up a handful and sprinkled it over his head. Grass clung to his sweat-sticky neck and upper arms, prickling his skin. Her hair had come unravelled, and strands of it lay across her face and shoulders. She looked enormously attractive to him just then, and as her eyes watched him, he saw his own desire reflected in her face as well. 

He laughed. ‘So what makes my beloved wife so childishly playful this summer afternoon?’ 

She grinned. ‘Something wonderful happened.’ 

‘What?’ 

‘I’m married to you!’ 

He raised himself on his elbow, looking down at her. ‘You have been married to me for months now! What makes you act as giddy as a new bride of a sudden?’ 

She put her head down abruptly, her hair falling across her face, concealing her eyes. ‘Yes, but I just remembered how wonderful it is.’ 

‘What is?’ 

She raised her face to him. Hair lay across her face in wild, unruly strands. A faint twinge of doubt tweaked his mind. What had got into her? He had never seen Sita like this before. Not even when— 

‘That I’m married to you! It’s wonderful! A miracle! We should celebrate it!’ 

She reached up and caught hold of his hand, pulling him down towards her. ‘We should celebrate it!’ 

He smiled at her excitement. ‘And we shall. But first we have to go to the river.’ 

She sat up and clapped her hands together. ‘That’s good too. Let’s go and bathe in the river!’ 

He laughed. ‘That we shall. But not in the way you mean. I speak of our sandhyavandana. Have you collected the flowers yet?’ 

She peered up at him, shading her eyes from the sun, which was low in the western sky now. ‘Flowers?’ 

‘For the evening ritual, Sita.’ 

She shrugged, looking down at the ground, and began plucking up handfuls of grass. ‘I’m tired of rituals and ceremonies. We are in exile, are we not? Everything else deprived us, our homes, our kingdoms, all wealth and comfort. At least we still have each other. Can we not enjoy that much at least as we please?’ 

He was puzzled now. She sounded strange, almost resentful. It was an abrupt change of mood, totally unlike Sita. ‘Yes, of course. And we do share one another’s companionship; it is what makes our exile so bearable, even wonderful at times. Only this afternoon I was thinking of how I would have passed fourteen years without you or Lakshman, and I realised—’ 

‘Lakshman.’ 

‘What?’ 

She looked up abruptly. ‘Where is he? Your brother?’ 

This was very peculiar. ‘I don’t know. I slept the afternoon away.’ He grinned sheepishly. ‘Lazy buffalo that I am. He must be down by the river, working on that pathway.’ 

She was silent for a moment. Then suddenly, in another unexpected change of mood, she smiled seductively up at him. ‘Let’s go into the hut.’ 

He frowned. 

‘We will. But first we have to gather flowers for the evening ritual—’ 

‘To hell with the evening ritual,’ she said sharply. Then, reverting to the same silky, seductive tone: ‘Rama, I am unhappy. 

Being in exile is not easy. Comfort me. Give me the warmth of 

your companionship.’ 

He stared at her. 

He felt as if a large insect were trailing its feelers across his back. He resisted the urge to turn around. ‘I thought I heard singing as I slept. Earlier in the afternoon. Was that you?’ 

She smiled. ‘You remember that song?’ 

‘Which one?’ 

‘You know. The one we sang together the night of our wedding.’ 

‘The song from the play of Dushyanta and Sakuntala?’ 

‘Yes.’ She seemed pleased. ‘That’s the one.’ 

He chose his words very carefully. ‘You mean the song from the play
Sakuntala,
don’t you?’ 

‘Yes, yes. From
Sakuntala and Dushyanta
. The same. The lovers’ song.’ 

‘Remember the last time we sang that song?’ He spoke with deliberate casualness. 

‘Just the other night, was it not, my love?’ She smiled up at him coyly. ‘But lovers ought to do more than sing love songs.’ 

He felt his spine grow cold. Ice ran into his veins. ‘Stand up.’ 

She held her arms up to him, beckoning him alluringly. ‘Come, lie with me.’ 

‘I said, stand up.’ His voice was curt now, with no tenderness or hint of pretence. 

She looked up at him, a puzzled expression in her brown eyes. ‘What is it? Did I say something wrong, my love?’ 

‘Many things. But I would have guessed even had you not spoken a word. Did you truly think you could deceive me so easily?’ 

She pouted. ‘Why are you speaking so harshly to me, my lord? It is I, Sita. Your wife.’ 

He laughed. ‘No. You are not Sita. You are not my wife.’ 

SIXTEEN 

Lakshman paused to examine his handiwork. The line of thick, bushy darbha grass was trimmed as close as he could manage with just a sword. He leaned forward, running the palm of his hand across the top of the neatly trimmed grass. It felt like fur, a bearcoat perhaps, or shaggy sheep’s wool. 

He stood up, satisfied. Sweat dripped down his back and shoulders. He stretched, easing the tension from his body. Slowly he grew aware of the sun on his shoulders, and on the ground. The afternoon had crept into evening without him knowing. He had been absorbed in his work. Cutting grass away to clear a path didn’t need that much concentration; keeping a wary eye out for the proliferation of snakes did. 

He looked uphill, at the winding pathway of neatly cut grass, just about a yard in width. Every few yards or so a dark tangle lay off to one side or the other, some easily visible, others hidden by the grass. Those tangles, looking like so many lengths of coloured twine, some black, some green, some speckled, dotted, matted … those were all snakes that he had had to kill to clear the pathway. Three nests had lain directly on the pathway -the route he had marked as the most accessible from hut to river. It had taken almost a week of patient, risky work, clearing away the snakes, emptying out the nests and filling in the holes to prevent them from coming back - leaving a partial snake eggshell or two in the filled-in hole was a good deterrent - and then undertaking the arduous task of mowing the grass, with only his sword for the task. His back ached pleasantly from the task, his shoulders and neck were sore, but it was done at last. Now, when he or Sita or Rama went down to the river carrying a mud pot for water, they wouldn’t have to constantly look out for snakes underfoot. Or avoid the snake nests and climb through thorn bushes or down crumbling rocky slopes. They could walk along the path as comfortably as Ayodhyans along Suryavansha Avenue. 

He smiled at his own simile. Suryavansha Avenue. That was funny. Then again, perhaps he should name his newly made path. Who knew? Some day people might come to look at the spot where they had lived in exile, and stare and point at these things. There, they would say, looking at this pathway down the hillside, that was cut by Lakshman to ease his brother’s and bhabhi’s thrice-daily trips to the river. Hmm. If this little path was going to become such a legend, it ought to have a name. What should he call it? Definitely not Suryavansha Avenue! He grinned at his own wit. 

He glanced up, remembering how the path seemed to wind around the hill like a necklace if seen from the river, and instantly the word rekha came to mind. Rekha, meaning line or border. Yes, that was good, for after Anasuya’s warning, the river had become their border. But rekha alone was too general, too vague. How could he make it more specific? Hmm. How had their ancestors named roads and places in Ayodhya? After themselves of course. Raghuvamsha Avenue, Manu Sabagraha, Aja Marg … So why not Lakshman Rekha? It had a ring to it. 

Did it sound vain? Not really. After all, he’d made the pathway, hadn’t he? So it was his right to name it. Lakshman Rekha, then. It had a nice ring to it, Lakshman’s Borderline. 

He stood, grinning to himself, feeling absurd. Now all he needed was a few dozen PFs to patrol the path, and then it would truly be a border. Until then— 

The scream rang out through the heavy afternoon silence, piercing and shrill. As suddenly as it had begun, it broke off, as if someone had covered the woman’s mouth in mid-scream. 

He froze momentarily, just long enough to try to make out the direction and distance of the scream’s origin. 

Then he broke into a sprint, running straight uphill, up the path he had just finished clearing. The wind hissed in his ears as he ran, like the ghosts of the snakes he had slaughtered. 

Rama backed away from the woman lying on the grass. She had released the maya-jal, the asura spell that had transformed her body and features to make her appear to be Sita. The changes themselves were mainly physical, he saw, as she struggled and writhed with the morphing that was enlarging bones, growing fur, and otherwise altering the very structure of her body into something wholly inhuman. She was some kind of asura. A yaksi, he guessed, for they possessed the power to morph. But there was rakshasa blood in her as well. He could see the unmistakable demoniac signs that were so typical of the rakshasa species - the nubs of horns on the crown of her skull, the sharp ridges of bone along her upper spine, the shaggy-haired ears … A crossbreed then, a yaksi-rakshasi. And she had used a spell in addition to her natural morphing abilities, for while morphing enabled her to take human form convincingly, it took sorcery to make her look and sound like a specific human; in this case, Sita. 

And where was Sita then? What had this she-demon done with her? His anger threatened to rise. He fought it down with an effort, determined to see this through calmly, no matter what.
No matter what
. 

The morph completed, she threw back her head and issued a brief shrill scream that she herself choked off midway. She stood before him on all fours now, a creature covered with fur like a golden leopard, but with the wide-set eyes and snubby nose of a deer. A scar on her left flank caught his eye, sparking some memory, but he couldn’t follow the thought through to its end. It was not relevant. Nothing else was relevant except learning where Sita was and getting her back safe and sound. And to do that, he must play cat-and-mouse with this demoness.