Chapter 25 — The Golden Deer

Ravana found Maricha living apart from the noise of kingship, in a hermitage by the sea. The old rakshasa received him with the forms due to a guest, but when Ravana named Rama, the welcome left his face.

“You know Janasthana,” Ravana said. “Khara, Dushana, my sister, and the force that served there are dead. Rama did it alone. I mean to take his wife. You will become a deer—golden, bright with silver spots—and wander where she can see you. She will ask for you. When the brothers are drawn away, I will take her.”

For a moment Maricha said nothing. He had once possessed the strength and confidence of a terror in the forest. Then, at Vishvamitra's rite, Rama had met him while still a young prince and hurled him with one arrow across the sea. The memory had not faded into a story. It had made a different life of him.

“Someone has spoken to you as an enemy,” Maricha said at last. “Rama is not the man you describe. He left a kingdom to keep his father's word. Do not make Sita the cause of Lanka's ruin. I have seen his arrow. I have lived because it chose not to kill me.”

Ravana listened without yielding. Maricha warned him again: a ruler ruled by appetite could destroy his own people; Rama was not weak because he wore bark and lived in a forest. But Ravana had already turned counsel into an insult. When Maricha still resisted, he made the choice plain: serve the plan or die at once by Ravana's hand.

Maricha looked toward the water. Death seemed to stand on either side of him. “Then I will go,” he said. “Better to fall before Rama than be killed by you.”

They traveled north. At Panchavati the leaf dwelling stood among trees and open ground near the Godavari, the place Lakshmana had made with such care. Rama and Lakshmana were there with Sita when a deer moved out from the forest's edge.

It was unlike any creature that belonged wholly to the woods: its hide seemed to hold gold in the sunlight, its flanks were marked with pale gleams, and when it stepped behind a trunk it returned somewhere else, close enough to invite pursuit and far enough to deny it. It grazed, lifted its head, and looked toward the dwelling.

Sita watched it for a long time. “Have you ever seen one like it?” she asked.

Lakshmana's hand went to his bow. “No. That is why I distrust it.”

But Sita had seen the deer among the flowering trees, alive with a beauty that made the familiar clearing strange. She asked Rama to bring it back if it could be captured; it would be a wonder in their dwelling and, if capture proved impossible, its skin might be used. Her request was direct, not careless. Rama, too, saw that the animal was extraordinary. He remembered the rakshasas' powers of assumed form. Yet the deer had drawn close, and he chose to follow it.

He took up his bow and spoke to Lakshmana. “Stay with Sita. Watch the dwelling. This forest does not show us everything it holds.”

Then he went after the deer.

It led him through the trees without ever giving itself fully. When Rama came near, it sprang away; when he slowed, it appeared again amid leaves or at the edge of a glade. At last, far from Panchavati, Rama saw the deception clearly. He set an arrow to the bow. The shaft struck. The shining animal fell, and Maricha rose from the false form, wounded beyond escape.

His last service to Ravana was a cry thrown through the forest in Rama's voice: “Sita! Lakshmana!”

At the dwelling, Sita heard it and went pale. “That was Rama.”

Lakshmana had heard it too, but he did not move. “No danger can force that cry from him,” he said. “It is deceit. He told me to remain with you.”

“And if it is not?” Sita asked. “If he is calling for you while you stand here reasoning?”

“Rama can meet any danger in this forest,” Lakshmana said, though the cry had cut through him too. “The one who made that sound wants this dwelling empty. If I leave, I disobey him. If I stay, I protect you as he commanded.”

“You speak as though his command matters more than his life.” Sita moved toward the path, stopped, and turned back. “Go to him, Lakshmana. Help him. If he is safe, you will have lost nothing. If he is not, every moment you spend here becomes a wound you chose.”

He tried once more to steady her. “Do not follow the sound. Wait for us.”

But fear made his steadiness unbearable. The forest had answered in Rama's voice; to Sita, Lakshmana's refusal seemed like a choice to abandon him. Her words became hard, and Lakshmana received them without answering in kind. Neither could undo the danger gathering beyond the trees.

At last he bowed his head. “I will go to him.” He drew an arrowhead through the dust around the dwelling, marking a narrow boundary at its threshold. “Remain within this line until we return. It will hold while you do not cross it.”

Sita looked at the line, then toward the path Rama had taken. “Bring him back.”

Lakshmana looked once toward her, once into the trees, and went.

Sita was left alone in the clearing. The forest, which had held birdsong and running water a short while before, seemed to listen.