Chapter 28 — The Son of the Wind

Pampa lay bright below Rishyamukha Mountain. Its water held lotus and blue water-lily; birds crossed above it in pairs, calling through the flowering woods. To Rama the abundance was almost cruel. The season had opened the trees, warmed the wind, and set every living thing beside its mate. He walked with Lakshmana among the rocks and kept seeing, in the lake's dark eyes and the moving branches, what was not there: Sita's face, Sita's hand, Sita beside him.

Above them, Sugriva saw two armed men coming through the forest.

He had been living on Rishyamukha as a hunted man lives: never looking at one path without imagining another. Sugriva was a vanara prince. The vanaras were powerful forest people, often seen in ape-like form, but they were no ordinary animals: they made kingdoms, held councils, fought wars, and kept loyalties as fiercely as human rulers. His elder brother Vali had driven him from their city of Kishkindha and hunted him from place to place. Only Rishyamukha protected him. A sage's curse forbade Vali to set foot on the mountain.

Yet the sight of the strangers still emptied the color from Sugriva's face. They were broad-shouldered, carrying bows, clothed in bark and deer skin but moving with the contained force of trained warriors.

“Vali has sent them,” Sugriva said. “Why else would such men come here?”

His companions looked down in alarm. Hanuman did not answer at once. He was Sugriva's counsellor, a vanara of unusual strength, called the Son of the Wind. But strength was not what Sugriva needed first. Hanuman studied the strangers' pace, their weapons, their grief-sharpened faces.

“Let me learn who they are,” he said.

He descended the mountain in the guise of an ascetic traveller. He did not rush them or demand an account. Standing at a respectful distance, he greeted them in measured words: two men of royal bearing, armed for danger, wearing the dress of exile—what brought them into a forest where even settled people traveled carefully?

Rama listened. The speech was clear, neither servile nor intrusive; its questions had been placed with care. When Hanuman finished, Rama turned to Lakshmana.

“Hear how he speaks,” he said quietly. “No one without deep learning could shape language with such restraint. A king who has such a messenger has reason to hope.”

Lakshmana answered for them. He named Rama, eldest son of Dasharatha of Ayodhya, and told of the fourteen-year exile. He named Sita and said that Ravana had carried her away by force. He told of Jatayu's dying witness, of the long search, and of the counsel that had sent the brothers toward Pampa and Sugriva.

At the name of Sugriva, Hanuman's caution became purpose. He let the ascetic disguise fall away.

“I am Hanuman,” he said, “a counsellor of Sugriva, who has also been driven from what was his. He asks for friendship with you, if you will accept it. He may help you seek Sita. And he needs help against the brother who has made him an exile.”

Rama did not mistake a possibility for a rescue. But the road that had brought him from Panchavati to Pampa had led only through loss and hearsay. Here, at last, stood someone who offered a living connection.

“Take us to him,” he said.

Hanuman's pleasure showed itself not in boasting but in action. He resumed his vanara form, made his shoulders broad and steady, and lifted Rama and Lakshmana onto his back. With the two armed brothers holding fast, he sprang from ledge to ledge over the broken ground and carried them up Rishyamukha to Sugriva's shelter among the rocks.

Sugriva came forward cautiously. He took a human shape to meet them and looked first at their faces, then at their bows. Hanuman repeated what he had learned. When he was done, Sugriva spoke to Rama with a frankness born of fear.

“I too have been dispossessed by my brother. I have come to this mountain with only those who would not abandon me. If you will be my friend, I will use all the strength I can gather to seek your wife.”

Rama answered, “If you will help me find Sita, I will help you against the wrong that has driven you here.”

Hanuman kindled a fire between them. In that world a fire could witness a pledge: not an ornament to their meeting, but a presence before which a promise was made binding. Rama and Sugriva circled it, each taking the other's hand. The words were simple. Each would stand for the other's cause.

For a moment the pact did not remove either man's grief. It only placed both griefs in the open.

Then Sugriva gave a sign that the promise might have a road beneath it. “Some days ago,” he said, “we saw a woman being carried through the sky by a terrible being. She cried out. She threw down a cloth and ornaments. We did not know her name or where she was being taken. But we kept what fell.”

He sent Hanuman into a cave in the mountain. Hanuman returned with a folded upper cloth and a small bundle. When it was opened, bright ornaments lay against the stone.

Rama did not seize the bundle. He opened his hands beneath it, as though receiving an offering that had travelled too far. Sita's upper cloth lay folded across his palms; its fabric, once part of the life they had made at Panchavati, had fallen from the sky while she was being carried away. Beside it, gold caught the cave's thin light—small, familiar pieces of a person whom distance had made unreachable. His grief, which he had thrown against trees and rivers, found at last something it could touch: not Sita, not safety, but the signs she had sent down while she was being taken.

“I know these,” he said at last.

Lakshmana knelt beside him. He looked at the anklets and lowered his eyes. “These I know,” he said. “I saw them each day when I bowed to her feet. The other ornaments I cannot claim to know.”

No one laughed at the plainness of the answer. Sugriva watched Rama's grief with the attention of someone whose own life had been broken by a brother's act. He did not claim to know the road to Lanka. He did not offer a certainty he did not have.

“We will search,” he said. “I will summon every ally who can go.”

Rama pressed the cloth once more between his hands. “And I will hear your story,” he said. “Tell me what Vali did.”

Outside the mountain refuge, Pampa continued to shine. Within it, the first alliance of the search had been made.