Chapter 1 — One Earth

Rama opened his palm again, and the jewel from Sita’s hair was still resting there, small, bright, warmed by his own skin.

The vanara who had carried it back across the sea sat on the stone before him. Hanuman’s fur still stood stiff with dried salt. He had just finished his tale, and all along the mountainside behind him thousands of other vanaras had stopped chewing, leaving wild fruits half bitten in their hands.

“Two months, Prince,” Hanuman said. “That is all that remains of the span Ravana set for her. If she still refuses the rakshasa king when that morning dawns, the palace cooks will dress her flesh for his morning meal.”

Lakshmana stood beside his brother with his bow slung over his shoulder. He watched Rama’s fingers close over the gem once more until not a glint of red escaped between his knuckles.

“You leaped across that sea, searched the city, found her, and returned whole,” Rama said, looking at Hanuman. “Save the Wind himself and Garuda, lord of birds, who else on earth could do such a deed?” Hanuman raised both folded palms above his crown. Rama turned his eyes southward toward the water unseen behind the ridges. “Yet the rest of us cannot leap a hundred yojanas. How is a host as vast as this to cross the ocean? What more can an army of vanaras do than muster along the beach and stare at the surf?”

Sugriva, king of the vanaras, stepped down from the boulder where he had been sitting.

“Do not let sorrow master your spirit, Prince. Your queen has been found, and the enemy’s lair is known to us.” He pointed south over the heads of the seated ranks. “We will throw a bridge across the sea. Rouse yourself and lay our plan. Victory is yours already, before the first stone touches the far shore.”

Rama turned back to Hanuman.

“You walked every street of that island. Tell me how the city is built.”

Hanuman stepped down from his stone, crouched on the dirt, and drew lines with his thumbnail. Four short strokes for the four gates. One wide circle enclosing them all.

“The gates are barred with forged iron, Prince. Mounted atop the arches stand engines for hurling boulders and iron-headed beams that crush a hundred men at a single drop.” His nail deepened the circle around the gates. “The ramparts are plated with gold and tower high above the crags. Around their foot runs a deep moat teeming with crocodiles and water-beasts that snatch down anyone who wades in. And at every bridge across the moat stand rows of war engines.”

Straightening his back, he swept the flat of his palm across the dirt until the drawing was wiped smooth.

“Yet my wrath has already toppled those walls once. I choked their moat with rubble and burned their roofs to ash.” He glanced back down the slope at the massed troops. “Why march the whole host across? Give me a handful of our chief captains, and we will finish what remains before nightfall.”

Rama rose to his feet. Lifting his bow from the stone, he slung it across his shoulder.

“The sun stands directly overhead, at the auspicious juncture named Abhijit.” His right eyelid twitched of itself, once, twice, and he touched it with the tip of his finger. “My eye twitches for victory. My enemy is about to fall. Once word reaches Sita that I am marching to her gate, her heart will hold fast, like a dying man whose lips are moistened with a drop of immortal nectar.”

“Marshal all the hosts, Sugriva. We march for the southern shore.” He pointed toward the vanguard, where the swiftest vanaras already stood poised on the rocks with lifted tails. “Let Nila lead the advance with a hundred thousand of our keenest scouts to find fresh water and fruit-bearing woods along the line of march. Search every defile and wooded hollow ahead of the main body, lest the rakshasas lie in ambush along the way.”

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Out they poured from the mountain caves, from the rocky clefts, from the deep forest glades, until Rama could no longer see a hand’s breadth of bare earth between the moving backs.

He rode upon Hanuman’s shoulders, high above the marching columns. Beside him Lakshmana rode upon the broad back of Angada. From that height the vanara host looked like a tawny sea flooding southward, filling valley after valley while its rear guard was still lost behind the northern hills.

The vanaras fed themselves as they marched. They tore wild honeycombs from the boughs and licked their sticky fingers, wrenched flowering trees up by the roots to strip their blossoms, and tossed the bare trunks behind them. A young warrior carried his comrade piggyback up the whole length of a ridge, then dumped him laughing into the grass at the crest. The thrown vanara sprang up at a bound and tackled him around the waist, and the two of them rolled over and over trading playful cuffs until the column marching behind had to step right over their heads.

“Ravana dies!” someone shouted up near the front. A thousand throats caught up the cry, then ten thousand, rolling it back down the line all the way to the rearmost companies.

At the foot of a valley appeared the thatched roofs of a human village with kitchen smoke curling up through the trees. At once the vanguard swung wide around the fields, and the entire army bent its course after them. Such had been Rama’s strict command from the first day of the march, that no human settlement was to be trampled or disturbed.

“Brother,” Lakshmana called across from Angada’s shoulders, his face bright in the sun. “A gentle breeze is blowing straight toward us, sweet with the scent of forest blossoms. The sky stands clear of dust, and the beasts of the woods run with us on our right hand. Tonight the northern stars will shine clear above our camp.” He smiled broadly. “Every omen speaks with one voice, Brother. You will return to Ayodhya with your queen.”

Day after day they pressed south through the passes of Malaya and the Vindhya crags. Small mountain streams were drunk dry by the vanguard before the middle columns ever reached their banks. Then the land began to climb once more, and Hanuman carried Rama up the flank of the last coastal range.

Along that upper slope the air had already changed. The birds wheeling above the column were different now, whiter of plumage, longer of wing, gliding flat on the updrafts without beating their pinions. The wind came damp and sharp with salt. Sliding down from Hanuman’s shoulders, Rama walked the last ten paces to the rocky brink on his own two feet and halted.

Below him, to the left, to the right, and straight ahead as far as the eye could reach, lay nothing but the sea.

Its rollers reared high and broke in sheets of white foam. Out along the horizon showed neither dark line of land nor shadow of an island. The whole ocean heaved itself up and dashed its weight against the base of the mountain, sending the boom of the surf echoing up to the peak. Out there beyond that waste of water, a hundred yojanas south, Sita was counting the days on her fingers.

At the foot of the slope, the leading companies spilled out onto the sand. The foremost vanaras charged down to the water’s edge, skidded to a halt as the first breaker foamed cold over their toes, scrambled back, and edged forward again. One dipped a finger into the surf, touched it to his tongue, and spat. Behind them column after column kept streaming down out of the coastal woods, halting in three vast divisions beneath the shoreward trees because there was nowhere left to walk.

Sugriva climbed the ledge and stood beside Rama.

“This ocean yields no footpath, Sugriva,” Rama said. “Pitch our camp along the shore in three divisions to guard against surprise. Here we halt until we find a way to cross over to that island.”

---

That night watchfires burned in a long chain down the curve of the beach while vanara sentries paced from post to post.

With Lakshmana at his side, Rama walked out across the wet sand well away from the glare of the fires. Once darkness fell, the face of the sea changed. Great crocodiles surfaced in the shallows, thrashing through the black water after fish. Giant sea-serpents swam past with glowing crests upon their hoods that lit the green depths fathoms below. When the full moon climbed above the eastern headlands, every rolling wave-back caught its silver, setting a thousand broken moons rocking across the deep.

Rama stopped where the last thin sheet of foam hissed up the sand. The cold brine washed around his heels.

“Men say that sorrow wears thin as the days pass, Brother,” he said, looking out across the water. “Mine only grows sharper. What cuts deepest is not even my own loss of her. It is that her young years are running out one by one in terror inside a stranger’s house.”

A wind blew in from the south, out of the dark over the water, parting the matted locks across Rama’s brow.

“Blow first upon the garden where my lady sits captive, O wind,” Rama said softly, “touch her cheek, and then blow upon mine. Even if my eyes cannot behold her tonight, your touch upon my skin will be enough. On the day that rakshasa dragged her into the sky, she cried out my name, My lord, my lord. That cry rings inside my ears day and night without ceasing.”

The next roller came in higher, washing up to Rama’s calves, and he did not step back.

“Leave me here on the sand, Lakshmana. I will lie down upon the breast of this ocean and sleep. Perhaps its cold waters will quench the fire burning inside my ribs.”

Lakshmana stepped forward into the surf and stood beside his brother, his shoulder brushing Rama’s arm.

“When will I lift her chin in my hand again, Lakshmana, and look into those wide eyes of hers?” Rama opened his fist, letting the red hair-jewel catch the moonlight. “Where does she lie tonight? On the cold dirt among monsters, with no kinsman near to answer her call, still whispering her husband’s name.”

The wave sucked back down the slope, pulling the wet sand from beneath their insteps.

“One thought alone keeps the breath in my body,” Rama said. “One and the same earth bears both her feet and mine. Knowing that she still lives upon this ground is enough to keep me standing. The soil that holds her up in Lanka reaches unbroken beneath this sea to the sand under my heels.”

He lifted his face toward the moon.

“Soon she will rise clear of this darkness, Lakshmana, like the crescent moon climbing the autumn sky. And those rakshasas will scatter before my shafts like broken clouds.”