Breaking the Bow: Speculative Fiction Inspired by the Ramayana

by Edited by Anil Menon

Sita’s eyes raised to Rama’s. She held her cupped palms up toward him again.

  “So,” she said. “Play for them. Make their love even sweeter.”

  “You always fall asleep when I play.”

  Sita laughed and shook her head, never taking her eyes from Rama’s.

  Lakshmana lifted his hand to his mouth to cover a yawn.

  Rama lifted his flute and, with a smile for Sita that only pretended to be chiding, started once again to play.

  Dew, along with the evening’s cool, had stolen over the garden. In the twilight, lanterns glowed in the open windows of a house as elegantly built as it was modest. The sounds of three human voices, one female and two male, drifted from the windows and mingled with the cries of birds at dusk.

  The two butterflies-Aruna, the brown-winged, and Jalanili, the blue-rested together. They were hidden inside a fold of Sita’s silk rug where she had left it on the grass under the mango tree. The wings of the butterflies fanned the air with languid pleasure as they nibbled a bit of fallen ripe fruit.

  “Ah,” Jalanili sighed. “To love as they do, the man and the woman who have come to live here. Would it not be a perfect thing, Aruna?”

  Aruna was about to reply: No. How could we ask for more than this?

  But he found himself thinking of Rama and the way that Sita would look at him when he played the flute.

  “Perhaps,” he said.

  “Perhaps?” whispered a third voice.

  A crow stood in the grass outside the cavelike fold of the silk rug. Its black-feathered head was turned sideways as it peered inside the rug at the two butterflies. One topaz eye blinked at Aruna and Jalanili. The tip of the crow’s curved beak touched the rug’s edge.

  Jalanili screamed a tiny butterfly scream. She pressed herself against Aruna, whose wings dropped over her like a blanket.

  “You have nothing to fear,” the crow whispered. “You see, I don’t eat butterflies.”

  There was a low menace in the crow’s tone that made Aruna wonder, as he felt Jalanili’s terrified breaths pulsing rapidly against his own thorax, whether it would be better to be eaten by this creature.

  “But,” the crow continued, “I do grant wishes.”

  Jalanili’s breaths stopped.

  So did Aruna’s.

  “And, please forgive me if I misheard just now. But it sounded as if the two of you wished to love as those two do.” The crow’s tilted head jerked toward the house.

  “Who are you?” Aruna murmured.

  “I’ve already told you.” The crow was still whispering. Its voice grated like a sandal dragged over gravel. “Now. What’s your answer?”

  “You would make us human?” Jalanili’s head had nudged out from underneath Aruna’s wing. Her multifaceted eyes stared into the crow’s single tawny orb.

  “I would make you,” the crow said, “whatever you wanted.”

  “How can you do this?” Jalanili asked. “What gives you that kind of power? Are you a god? An asura?”

  “It’s nothing to turn a butterfly into something else. Even a crow could manage that.”

  “But you’re no crow,” Aruna said.

  In the last of the faint light he thought he saw the crow smile, though its black beak was hard as horn.

  “No.” The crow whispered with only a thin ribbon of breath now. Aruna had to hold his own breath to hear its words. “You see clearly, my brown-winged brother. I am no crow. A dangerous thing for a butterfly like you to know, especially in a hallowed place like this. Now. I could tell the other crows where you are, and, within an hour, you could be nothing more than their evening meal. Or. I could fly away, and you could live. As butterflies. And love each other for a few more brief days, here in this paradise. Your lives are no longer than that.”

  “No,” Jalanili said.

  “No?” said the crow.

  Jalanili slowly shook her head. “You’re wrong. We live as long as they do.”

  “Who told you that, my blue-winged beauty?”

  “We…” Jalanili’s voice faltered.

  Aruna glanced at his mate. She looked stricken. He could feel her wings sag beneath his.

  “Who lied to you and told you that you live as long as a human?” The dark glee in the crow’s voice made Aruna want to shrink as far away as he could from the sound of its whisper. “Did she tell you that? Or did he?”

  Jalanili was silent.

  “After today, you live a few more days. That’s all. It makes no difference, not to a god, or a human, or”- The crow’s hiss sputtered in what sounded like a laugh- “an asura.”

  “There are no asuras here.” Aruna hoped his small voice sounded braver than he felt. “The man with the sword would-”

  Like the blade of a knife, the crow’s beak lunged inside the fold of the silk rug and snapped shut with undisguised fury. Aruna curled his wings around Jalanili as both butterflies screamed.

  “Do not speak of that man,” the crow whispered. “He’s no man at all, but a demon. There are things too dangerous for a butterfly to know here, o brown-winged brother. I won’t warn you again.”

  The crow withdrew its beak and pressed the side of its dark head up to the opening of the rug’s fold. The topaz eye blinked. “Now,” the crow continued. “You could be eaten. You could die. Or. You could love each other as they do. For lifetimes. Long enough for this tree we’re under to grow, and fall, and be born again in the seeds of its fruit. Can you imagine that?”

  “Yes,” Aruna heard Jalanili say softly.

  The sadness in her voice broke his heart.

  In that moment-in Jalanili’s single word-he could imagine it too.

  He heard himself say: “Yes.”

  “Then,” the crow said, “it shall be.”

  Aruna opened his eyes. He had been asleep for a long time. Underneath his body-as strange to him as when he had first crawled out of the chrysalis, but weighed down by too many limbs and not enough at the same time-sharp rocks pressed into the tender surface of his bare skin. Above him, the sun shone with merciless fury. He had never been so afraid of its heat and light.

  Not as a butterfly.

  Aruna, the man, was lying curled on his side in the dry dirt furrows of an empty field. The garden of Rama and Sita had disappeared.

  Awkwardly he pulled himself to his hands and knees. He managed to crawl toward a small hut built of sticks and leaves at the end of the field’s rows. There, at least, he knew he would find shade.

  When Aruna reached the hut, he collapsed inside on its smooth floor of cool, clean-swept earth. Within reach of his fingers (fingers! he marveled at their treelike branches, the ridges of the tawny skin at each knuckle, and the sensations that came from them as he stretched them out) was a jar. His fingertips stroked the jar’s smooth, blue-glazed surface. To Aruna’s surprise, it was cold and moist with condensed water.

  He sat up. Lifting a metal ladle from the jar, Aruna poured icy water over his face, down his shoulders and chest, and into his open mouth. He drank until a sharp pain like the tip of an arrow stabbed between his eyes.

  “Jalanili?” he called as he lowered the ladle back into the jar.

  Aruna’s new voice was low and resonated inside his chest like a bell. Like Rama’s, he thought. His attention was caught by this new, human voice. He spoke Jalanili’s name several times-sometimes murmuring, sometimes shouting-as he stood and walked to the door of the hut.

  The furrows of the dry, empty field seemed to stretch to the edge of the world. The ridges of soil were the same color as the velvet brown of his butterfly wings.

  Aruna cupped his hands to his mouth and yelled from the doorway with all of his strength:

  “Jalanili!”

  A voice inside his head with the scrape of a sandal against gravel said:

  She is not here.

  Aruna looked around the field, then back inside th
e hut. He was alone.

  “Show yourself, crow,” he said.

  I told you. I am no crow.

  “What are you? An asura, then?”

  Look to the west. See what I am now.

  Low in the western sky, billowing clouds the color of a bruise were gathering. A cool wind touched Aruna’s forehead and lifted his black hair. Lightning flashed from the peaks of the clouds.

  Butterfly or human, you are nothing to me.

  Aruna took a few steps backward and sat down, cross-legged, on the smooth floor of the hut. The hut was so small that he could stretch out his arms and place his palms on its thin walls. Under his hands, the sticks and leaves trembled in the rising wind.

  “Where is Jalanili?” he said.

  She is with me.

  “In the storm?”

  Aruna heard the hollow rattle of the crow’s laughter. I am the storm.

  He thought of Rama and his flute, and Lakshmana with his curved sword, always waiting at the gate of the garden. Aruna heard himself say with his new, deep human voice: “Bring Jalanili to me.”

  To you, little brother! Who are you to command me?

  “Now.”

  // you want her, then meditate. Do what humans do. Ask the heavens for rain. She will come.

  A gust like a demon’s fist struck the walls of the hut. Aruna’s raised arms braced against its force, his elbows locked. He breathed deeply to stop the shaking in the pit of his stomach.

  For the first time Aruna meditated. He imagined the only rain he knew: the mists that had descended over the garden like the breath of the gods as he and Jalanili had hidden beneath the sheltering leaves of the mango tree, fanning their butterfly wings to keep them dry.

  The new effort of meditation exhausted him. Within moments Aruna’s eyes closed and his head was nodding toward his chest. The storm’s winds lashed the sides of the hut as he slept, still sitting with his arms raised.

  In Aruna’s dream, the rain came at night. The storm struck the parched soil of the field with enough force to split the world open.

  The earth was too dry to absorb the deluge. The rainwater could do nothing but race down the field’s furrows in all directions in a flash flood. Streams of water writhed across the drought-scourged earth like thousands of snakes.

  As in all dreams, time passed in a moment. The storm disappeared and was replaced by silence under a sky pale with dawn.

  Aruna saw his dream-self stand up from the floor and go to the door of his hut. Over his own shoulder he looked out into the field.

  The floods had vanished.

  A woman was walking up and down the furrows. The scalloped edge of her blue sari, embroidered in gold thread, swept the wet soil as she moved. A translucent veil in the same blue as her sari covered her hair; her face was turned away from Aruna. Her shoulders tilted back and forth and her slender arms parted the air as if she were dancing.

  Aruna was breathless at the sight of the woman. He wanted to call out to her, but he was afraid the sound of his voice would drive her away.

  Sita? he wondered.

  In the wake of the woman’s sweeping skirt, the wet earth was covered with an intricate pattern left by the prints of her bare feet.

  Aruna jerked awake.

  Sore from sleeping cross-legged, he stumbled to his feet and ran to the doorway of his hut.

  It was morning. There was the field, soaked with rain and covered with the footprints of a woman, just as he had dreamed.

  Aruna thought of the woman’s blue sari. He groaned and pulled at his hair.

  “Jalanili!” he shouted over and over to the empty field.

  When Aruna’s voice had grown hoarse, he went back into his hut and sat down cross-legged on the floor again. The effort sent arrows of pain up through his legs and back.

  “Asura,” Aruna said.

  The crow’s scraping whisper inside his mind sounded as if it had been waiting for him.

  I am here, little brother.

  “You tricked me.”

  Did I? The asura’s voice was amused.

  “You made me fall asleep.”

  It was your first time meditating. That was hardly my fault.

  “The woman in blue was Jalanili,” Aruna said. “Not Sita. Why didn’t you let me see her face before I woke up?”

  Jalanili appeared to you as she wanted to appear to you.

  This stung Aruna. He said, “What do you mean? Why didn’t she look at me?”

  She believes she is too ugly.

  Aruna thought of woman’s graceful arms rising above her veil as she danced. He looked down at the footprints in the wet soil. “I don’t understand, asura. She was so beautiful that I thought she was Sita.”

  Inside his mind Aruna could hear the voice smile. I will tell her that, little brother. She will be heartbroken to hear it. But I will make sure she knows what you said.

  “Why?” Aruna cried.

  She has been difficult about all of this. I think it will settle her mind.

  “Asura!”

  As he shouted, Aruna felt that he was alone once again.

  He wanted to crawl out of his aching, heavy human body and fly after Jalanili and the asura on butterfly wings. It had been a mistake to trust the asura. Aruna cursed himself for letting Jalanili believe the crow’s promise.

  But obstinate rage pinned Aruna to the floor of the hut. He wasn’t yet sure what meditation did, but he wasn’t ready to give it up either. And he had no wings.

  Aruna was a man now, and nothing more.

  His hands curled into fists on his knees.

  He thought about Rama and Sita and Lakshmana and the sadness in Jalanili’s voice when she learned how short her own life was. More than anything, Aruna thought about Jalanili.

  In the evening Aruna stood up from the floor of his hut and lurched toward the door. He was exhausted and hungry. The pain in his body had been replaced with emptiness.

  Next to the blue-glazed water jar was a cloth sack he had not noticed before. Curious, Aruna opened it.

  The sack was filled with mangoes.

  He lifted one out and stared at it, its heavy flesh resting in his palm shaking with hunger. When he raised the mango to his nose, the fruit’s perfume made him dizzy.

  Aruna ate mangoes and drank water as the sun set. He tossed the mango peels out through the hut’s door, but he gnawed every white core clean and put them back into the cloth sack. Then he washed his hands with a ladle of water from the jar and lay down on the hut’s bare floor to sleep.

  In the morning Aruna emptied the sack. He split the cores of the mangoes open and pulled out the seeds with his fingers. When he had filled the sack again with mango seeds, he raised it to his shoulders and went out into the field. After a day, the earth was still wet. He could see the patterns of Jalanili’s heels and toes in the dirt.

  Aruna knelt under the hot sun and planted mango seeds in Jalanili’s footprints.

  Then he went back inside the hut. After his work in the field, the hut’s shade was a blessing. Aruna’s legs no longer complained when he sat cross-legged. It was a relief to rest instead of planting furrow after furrow.

  Aruna said, “Asura.”

  He heard no answer.

  He thought of rain, and Jalanili, and was asleep in a moment.

  That night Aruna dreamed that the field was filled with crows. The brown furrows were covered with the fluttering of wings until the whole field seemed to have transformed into a single, iridescent, black-feathered creature. Caws from thousands of throats tore into Aruna’s ears.

  He could see each crow digging its beak into the footprints left by Jalanili where he had planted the mango seeds. Small black heads tilted back and beaks jerked open as the seeds were gulped down, one by one, by the birds.

  Aruna watched himself race out of the hut and into the field to scare the crows
away. No matter how he yelled or kicked or flung his arms, he could never frighten more than a few at a time. They would alight above Aruna in the air and beat at his head with their wings or lunge at his face with their outstretched claws.

  Time passed in a moment, as it does in dreams.

  The field was empty and silent. The earth was pockmarked with the tracks of birds. Aruna’s dream-self fell to his knees between two furrows. He watched his shoulders heave with sobs as he buried his face in his hands.

  At the edge of the field, a woman in a blue sari and veil crouched on the ground. She was pressing her fingers down into the earth. Her slender hands smoothed the dirt before she moved a step to the side and continued planting.

  Aruna’s conscious self watched the woman from the hut’s door. Look up, you fool! he wanted to shout to his dream-self out in the field. It’s her! It’s Jalanili! The shout dissolved into a faint hiss of breath in his throat. He wanted to run, but he was frozen to the spot.

  Jalanili lifted a muddy hand and pushed aside her veil to wipe sweat from her brow as she looked down. The back of her hand left a velvet brown streak across her forehead. She seemed not to hear or see Aruna’s dream-self weeping in the field.

  The beauty of her face, in profile, was a slender arrow that pierced the heart of the conscious Aruna. He stared, unable to breathe at the sight.

  Jalanili’s head turned. She found herself in his gaze. Her eyes widened.

  Aruna was awakened by his own shout.

  He leaped to his feet. As he ran to the door, he wondered if he would be fast enough to catch Jalanili still in the field.

  The field was empty. But the sight of the furrows stopped Aruna from taking another step.

  Every inch of the soil bore the handprints of a woman.

  Aruna looked up at the sky.

  “Asura!” he yelled.

  Now you shout at me, little brother?

  The voice was no longer a whisper, but a caw. It sounded harried and frantic.

  “That was Jalanili!”

  Indeed. And she recognized you.

  “Why are you playing with us like this?”

  This is no game.