Ch. 3: The Court Beneath the Banyan

The reign of King Fierce-Howl lasted through the whole of the cool season, and for a good part of it he was happier than he had ever been.

Every morning he woke beneath the banyan on a bed of soft grass that the rabbits had gathered for him. Quick-Fingers stood ready with the parasol. The peacock cried his titles to the rising sun: Fierce-Howl the Heaven-Dyed, Anointed of Indra, Protector of the Weak, Lord of the Banyan and the Hills. Then the court assembled, and the business of the day began.

There was a good deal of business. Fierce-Howl had not known how much a forest could quarrel. The boars complained that the deer trampled their wallows. The monkeys complained that the parrots were noisy, and the parrots complained that the monkeys stole their figs. Two porcupines came before him in a dispute over a hollow log that had lasted, by their account, for three generations. Fierce-Howl heard them all, nodding wisely, and gave judgements that were mostly sensible, because a jackal who has lived by his wits on the edges of other creatures' lives learns a great deal about how creatures behave.

“The log,” he told the porcupines, “shall belong to whichever of you can show me which end of it faces the morning sun.” They went away to argue about that instead, and the court laughed, and the lion said, “Truly, Majesty, the gods chose well.”

Fierce-Howl warmed himself in that praise as a lizard warms itself on a stone.

The lions and tigers hunted for him. Each evening they brought what they had killed and laid it at the foot of his mound, and he divided it among the court after the manner of kings: the best portion to the lion, the next to the tiger, a share to the leopard, and so on down, keeping a fair part for himself. He ate better than he had ever eaten. His thin flanks filled out. His blue coat, washed only by dew, grew glossy.

It was in the evenings, when the meat had been shared and the court had settled into drowsy talk, that the trouble came.

It came first as a small thing. He found that he was always listening. Not to the courtiers, whose conversation was mostly flattery and gossip, but to something beyond them. The wind in the bamboo. The distant barking of a village dog. A sound that he did not hear, and was waiting to hear.

He did not like to name it.

The lion, he had discovered, was a dull companion. He talked of the old days and of his own past hunts, and repeated himself. The tiger was proud and touchy and watched him with a wary eye. The elephant was kind but slow, and fell asleep in the middle of sentences. Soft-Eyes worshipped him, which was pleasant, but one cannot talk to a creature who worships one; one can only be admired. And Quick-Fingers, who held the parasol, had sharp little eyes that missed nothing, and a habit of asking innocent questions.

“Majesty,” he said one evening, “what is it like, in Indra's heaven?”

“Bright,” said Fierce-Howl after a moment. “Very bright. And blue.”

“And what did you eat there, Majesty?”

“Nectar,” said Fierce-Howl. “Naturally.”

“Then you must find our poor meat very coarse.”

“A king,” said Fierce-Howl, “eats what his people bring him, and is grateful.” The court murmured approval at this fine sentiment, and Quick-Fingers said no more. But Fierce-Howl saw him glance, very briefly, at the bone in the king's paw, which had been gnawed in a manner that was not quite royal.

After that he ate more carefully.

There were nights when he could not sleep at all.

He would lie on his bed of soft grass with the great roots of the banyan curving above him like the pillars of a palace, and listen to the breathing of the tiger who guarded his bedchamber, and think of his old cave. It had been damp and low, and it had smelled of jackal; but it had been his. He thought of the pack on the hill beyond the tamarind grove, gathering at moonrise. He wondered who began the song now.

He thought of Long-Ears. Sometimes he composed speeches to her in his head, long and clever and full of reasons. A king must think of the whole forest. A king cannot keep thieves at his court. If I had let you stay, they would have discovered me, and then what good could I have done for anyone? In the speeches she always listened, and nodded, and at the end told him he had done well. But he never could make her say it in her own voice. In her own voice she said only, I taught it to sing.

Once, toward the end of the cool season, he could bear it no longer. He rose in the dark, stepped softly past the sleeping tiger, and slipped out of the clearing into the forest.

He went toward the hill. He did not mean to go all the way; he told himself he only wanted the night air. But his feet knew the paths, and before long he was at the edge of the tamarind grove, looking up at the low hill silvered by the moon.

They were there. He could see them, small grey shapes moving among the stones: the two brothers, the young mother with her cubs, half grown now. The lame one lying in the moonlight. And Long-Ears, a little apart, as always, her head lifted to the sky.

He stood in the shadows and watched them. He did not know what he had come for. To be recognised? To be forgiven? To be told to come home? He took one step forward out of the trees.

A twig cracked beneath his paw. Every head on the hill turned toward him.

For a moment there was perfect stillness. Then one of the cubs, catching the gleam of the moon on his coat, gave a squeal of terror: “The blue king! The blue king has come to drive us out again!” And the whole pack scattered, down the far side of the hill and away into the night, all but the lame one, who could not run, and lay pressed flat to the stones, trembling.

Fierce-Howl looked at him. The lame jackal would not meet his eyes.

He turned and went back to the banyan tree, and lay down on his bed of soft grass, and did not sleep at all.

In the morning Quick-Fingers, raising the parasol, remarked that there were burrs in the royal fur, and wondered where His Majesty could have been walking.

“In the gardens of my mind,” said Fierce-Howl coldly, and the monkey bowed and said nothing more.

But the lion had heard, and the tiger had heard, and in a forest, as in a court, a small question can lie a long time in the grass, quite still, waiting.