Ch. 2: Anointed of Indra

By the middle of the morning the whole forest knew.

News in a forest travels by many roads. The deer told the peacocks, who told everybody, very loudly, from the tops of the trees. The monkeys carried it from branch to branch, improving it as they went, so that by the time it reached the far side of the hills the blue creature was the size of a buffalo and breathed fire. The parrots repeated it without understanding it. The old tortoise by the lotus pond heard it last of all and said that he had seen stranger things in his youth, though he could not, when pressed, remember what they were.

Meanwhile the creatures who had actually seen the stranger kept their distance. They gathered in the clearing beneath the great banyan tree, the place where forest business was argued over whenever there was business to argue: lions and tigers and leopards, a family of wild boar, three grave old elephants, rabbits and gazelles, monkeys beyond counting, and, at the edge of things, as always, a little knot of jackals.

“Nobody knows where he came from,” said a gazelle. “Nobody knows what he eats.”

“Nobody knows his conduct, or his family, or his strength,” said one of the elephants slowly. “And the proverb says:

Where you do not know Conduct, stock, and pluck, 'Tis not wise to trust, If you wish for luck.”

There was a murmur of agreement. Several of the smaller animals began edging toward the bushes.

Only Long-Ears, sitting among the jackals, said nothing. She had heard the description of the stranger‘s size and the stranger’s ears and the stranger's thin tail, and a small, uneasy thought had come into her head. She put it away again. It was too absurd.

Fierce-Howl, crouching in a thicket not far off, had heard every word.

He had spent the morning in a fever of thinking. Twice he had nearly crept away to hide until the blue wore off. Twice he had stopped, remembering the deer's face. Nobody had ever looked at him like that. Lions looked through jackals; elephants did not see them at all; even rabbits, who had every reason to fear them, regarded jackals with a kind of weary scorn, as one regards bad weather. But the deer had looked at him as though he mattered.

And now the whole forest was afraid of him.

He found, examining his heart, that he did not dislike the feeling.

Still, fear is a dangerous thing to leave lying about. A frightened lion is apt to strike first and enquire afterwards. Fierce-Howl understood that he must say something, and that it must be something very grand indeed, and he had perhaps the space of a few breaths in which to think of it.

He stepped out of the thicket into the full sunlight of the clearing.

The effect was all he could have wished. A gasp went round the banyan tree like wind through dry leaves. The rabbits vanished. The gazelles bounded halfway up the slope and stood trembling. Even the lion rose to his feet, his mane bristling, and the tiger flattened his ears.

Fierce-Howl lifted his chin. He had seen, once, a governor ride through the market town on a white horse, and he tried now to remember exactly how the man had held his head.

“Come, come, you creatures of the wild,” he said. “Why do you run from me? There is no need. Hear me. Indra, the lord of the heavens, looked down upon this forest and saw that it had no king. He saw the strong devouring the weak without justice, and the weak hiding without hope. And it grieved him. So he took me, and coloured me with the colour of the heavens, so that all should know whence I came, and he sent me down to rule over you. My name is Fierce-Howl. From this day you may rest in safety, within the cage of my unconquerable paws.”

It was not, he thought afterwards, a perfect speech. “Cage” had perhaps been the wrong word. But nobody seemed to notice.

There was a long silence. Then the lion, who was very old and had grown tired of quarrelling with the tigers about boundaries, lowered his great head.

“Master,” he said, “tell us our duties.”

And one after another, the beasts of the forest bowed.

The court was arranged that same afternoon. Fierce-Howl found that, once he had begun, the business of being a king came to him very easily, as though he had been rehearsing it in secret all his life. In a sense he had.

He made the lion his prime minister, because the lion was the largest and the most respected, and because a lion who is your minister is a lion who is not your enemy. He made the tiger lord of the royal bedchamber, and the leopard keeper of the royal betel box, though there was no betel box and it had to be fashioned from a hollow gourd. The eldest elephant was appointed doorkeeper, which pleased him enormously, though there was no door. A monkey named Quick-Fingers was made bearer of the royal parasol, a broad lotus leaf on a stick, which he held over the king's head at all times and with a great deal of ceremony.

Lesser posts were found for lesser creatures. The peacock became royal herald. The boar became master of the forest roads. The deer who had first seen him, whose name was Soft-Eyes, was made a lady of the court, and was so overwhelmed that she wept.

Then Fierce-Howl turned his eyes to the edge of the clearing, where the jackals sat.

They were his own people. He knew every one of them: the two quarrelsome brothers, the young mother with her three cubs, the lame one who could no longer hunt and lived on what the others brought him. And Long-Ears, sitting a little apart, watching him with her head on one side.

He knew, too, how quick a jackal‘s nose was, and how sharp a jackal’s memory. Lions and elephants might be deceived by a coat of paint. Jackals would not be deceived for long. Already Long-Ears was looking at him in a way he did not like.

“These creatures,” he said loudly, “are unworthy of my court. They are thieves and scavengers. They skulk about the edges of things. Drive them out.”

The jackals stared at him. One of the brothers began to protest, and Fierce-Howl, before he could think better of it, sprang down and cuffed him across the muzzle. The others shrank back. The tiger, eager to show his new loyalty, gave a roar, and the jackals turned and fled from the clearing with their tails between their legs.

All but Long-Ears. She rose slowly, and stood for a moment looking at the blue king on his mound of earth beneath the lotus-leaf parasol.

“I know that voice,” she said quietly, so that only he could hear. “I taught it to sing.”

Then she turned and walked away into the trees, not hurrying, and did not look back.

Fierce-Howl watched her go. His heart was beating oddly. He told himself it was triumph.