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Kishkindha Kand · Episode 4
Search parties scatter to the four directions, and an aging eagle points the southern band toward Lanka.
The armies of Kishkindha poured out of the city like four rivers flowing from a single source, each bearing toward a different horizon.
Sugriva stood on the ramparts and watched them go. The northern band, led by Satabali, would sweep through the Himalayan kingdoms and the high plateaus beyond. The western band, under Sushena, would search the coastal lands, the desert fringes, the ports where traders spoke of distant islands. The eastern band, commanded by Vinata, would comb the forests of the sunrise, the river deltas, the kingdoms that edged the ocean.
But everyone understood that the southern band was the one that mattered.
Sugriva had received intelligence -- fragments, rumors, the dying words of Jatayu relayed through Rama -- that Ravana had carried Sita south. The southern search party was therefore the largest and the most carefully composed. At its head he placed Angada, son of the slain Vali -- a young prince carrying his father's strength and his father's sorrow, given this command partly as honor and partly as test. And walking beside Angada, in the position of chief minister and quiet authority, was Hanuman.
Sugriva pulled Hanuman aside before the departure. "The others search from duty. You search from something else. I have seen how you look at Rama, how you listen when he speaks. Whatever happens in the south, it will be you who finds the answer. I know this the way I know the sun will rise."
Hanuman said nothing. He bowed, adjusted the mace on his shoulder, and walked south.
The other three search parties returned within the month, each bearing the same report: nothing. They had searched faithfully, thoroughly, and found no trace of Sita, no sign of Ravana, no whisper of Lanka. The south swallowed the last of the searchers' hope and held it.
Angada's band pressed deeper than any vanara had traveled before. They crossed rivers so wide the far bank was a rumor. They climbed mountain ranges unnamed by any civilized tongue. They passed through forests where the trees grew so thick that noon was twilight and twilight was absolute dark. They asked every sage, every tribal elder, every wandering ascetic: have you seen a woman carried through the sky by a demon king? Most shook their heads. Some ran.
Weeks became a month. The month became several. Sugriva had given them a deadline, and it was approaching with the inevitability of a landslide. If they returned without news, the penalty was death -- Sugriva had been specific about this, his guilt over his own delay transformed into impossible demands on others.
The southern band reached the coast and stopped. Before them, the ocean stretched to the horizon, vast and featureless and mocking. They had searched every forest, every mountain, every cave between Kishkindha and the sea. Sita was not on the mainland. If she was anywhere, she was beyond that water.
They made camp on the shore and despair settled over them like ash.
It was Angada who voiced what everyone felt. "We have failed. Sugriva will execute us if we return empty-handed. But we cannot cross the sea. We cannot fly. We are trapped between death behind us and impossibility ahead."
Some of the vanaras began to weep. Others sat in silence, the particular silence of those who have exhausted every option and found each one locked. Hanuman sat apart on a boulder at the water's edge, watching the waves with an expression that no one could read.
Then came the voice.
It was old -- ancient, really -- and it came from above them, from the peak of a hill they had barely noticed. A great bird sat there, enormous and terrible, with feathers scorched down to the quill and wings that hung at wrong angles, as though they had been broken and healed badly many times over.
"I am Sampati," the bird said. "Brother of Jatayu."
The vanaras stared. They knew the name Jatayu -- the noble vulture who had fought Ravana in the sky to save Sita, who had had his wings severed for his courage, who had clung to life just long enough to tell Rama which direction Ravana had flown. Jatayu, who died in Rama's arms.
"My brother is dead," Sampati said, and his voice cracked like old wood. "I felt it. I have felt it in my bones for months, the absence where his presence used to be." He paused, mastering himself. "Tell me how he died."
Angada told him. He told Sampati everything -- Ravana's abduction, Jatayu's hopeless battle in the sky against a foe he could not defeat, the severed wings, the final words. When he finished, Sampati was silent for a long time.
Then the ancient eagle told his own story.
Once, long ago, Sampati and Jatayu had been young. They had challenged each other to fly higher than any bird had ever flown, spiraling upward toward the sun itself. Jatayu, the younger, had soared so high that the sun's heat began to burn his wings. Sampati, seeing his brother in danger, had flown above him, shielding Jatayu with his own body. The sun's fire consumed Sampati's wings. He fell to earth, broken, and had lived ever since on this lonely hill, grounded, watching the sky he could never return to.
He had sacrificed his wings to save his brother. And now his brother had sacrificed his life to save another.
"It seems," Sampati said, with the dry humor of the very old and very bereaved, "that our family has a habit of losing parts of itself for the sake of others."
Then he turned his great scorched head toward the south, and his ancient eyes -- eyes that could see farther than any creature alive -- focused on something beyond the horizon.
"I can see her," he said. "One hundred yojanas across the sea, on the island of Lanka, in a garden surrounded by demonesses. A woman sits beneath an ashoka tree. She is thin and grieving and she has not surrendered. That is Sita."
The camp erupted. Vanaras leapt to their feet, shouting, embracing, weeping with relief. The impossible search had an answer at last. Sita was alive. Sita was in Lanka. Sita could be found.
But the jubilation faded as quickly as it had risen, because the answer came with its own impossible question: one hundred yojanas of open ocean. Who among them could cross it?
They began to count their abilities. Each vanara named the farthest distance he could leap. Ten yojanas, said one. Twenty, said another. Thirty, said a seasoned warrior, with the wind at my back. None could come close. Angada, strongest among them after Hanuman, declared he could make eighty -- perhaps -- but would have nothing left for the return.
Slowly, one by one, every gaze in the camp turned to the figure still sitting on the boulder at the water's edge.
Hanuman had not moved. He had not joined the shouting. He sat watching the ocean with that same unreadable expression, as though he were listening to something the others could not hear.
It was Jambavan, the ancient bear king, who spoke. He was the oldest being present, old enough to remember things that Hanuman himself had forgotten -- or been made to forget.
"Hanuman," Jambavan said, his voice low and deliberate. "You do not know what you are. As a child, you leapt toward the sun, mistaking it for a fruit. Indra struck you down with his vajra, and you fell lifeless from the sky. Your father Vayu, the wind god, was so stricken with grief and fury that he withdrew all air from the world — every creature gasped, every flame guttered, the three realms suffocated. The gods rushed to appease him. They revived you, and to satisfy Vayu's rage, each god blessed you with powers beyond reckoning — Brahma gave you immunity from his weapons, Indra granted that the vajra would never harm you again, and others heaped boon upon boon until you were nearly indestructible. But a sage's curse made you forget your own strength until the moment someone reminded you. I am reminding you now."
He stepped closer.
"You are the son of the wind. The ocean is nothing to you. Lanka is nothing to you. You can leap one hundred yojanas the way other beings take a single step. Rise, Hanuman. Remember who you are."
Something shifted in Hanuman's face. Not surprise -- recognition. Like a man waking from a dream and realizing the dream was the small thing and waking life was vast. He stood. He seemed to grow. The boulder cracked beneath his feet.
He turned to face the ocean, and the ocean, for the first time, looked small.
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