Victory City(38)
“Is that Aranyani?” Yuktasri asked, unable to keep the note of awe out of her words.
“The goddess is never seen,” Pampa Kampana replied, “but if we have her blessing in this place, we will often hear her dancing near us. If she refuses us, then the dangers grow. Get used to the jingling bells. They are a part of what will protect us.”
“If I may intrude,” Haleya Kote intruded, “this is all very interesting, but we need to answer the questions of where we will stay, and also what we will drink, and eat.”
“Yes!” said Yotshna, smiling too wide a smile. “Very good point.”
Now that we know the full story of Bisnaga, that wooden hut, that palace in the forest where Pampa Kampana was queen in exile, and where she plotted her return in triumph, has become legendary. “Aranyani is not the only Being in this forest,” Pampa Kampana told her companions at the beginning of their work. “Every grove of trees, every stream has its own familiar spirits. We must ask permission to cut and build before we start. Otherwise whatever we do will be undone immediately, and if the spirits grow angry with us it will not be possible to remain.” So they made their appeals and when they had finished a light rain began to fall. The thick forest prevented the water from soaking them, but little rivulets ran down off the leaves and branches all around. “It’s fine,” Pampa Kampana said. “The rain is the blessing we need.”
After the rain, the four women and two men built their new home in a little glade where the trees retreated to allow the sun to shine down after the rain. They asked permission of the goddess and also of the lesser deities of tree and leaf, they used their fighting skills with swords and axes, and the trained strength of their bare hands which could chop their way through trees as if they were made of cotton. We see them in our mind’s eyes whirling through this grove, surrounded by giant trees without names, trees of myth and legend, weaving their new home into being in a dizzying display of athleticism and grace, lifting themselves off the ground to tear off higher branches, and spreading over their sylvan shelter a broad canopy of leaves. The drummer in the air and the invisible dancer both paused for a moment to watch the extraordinary sight, then resumed, and the house came into being to the music of the hidden gods.
The old soldier, Haleya Kote, proved to be the one who had thought ahead about practical matters. From the bulging bags he had loaded onto his horse and which, after the horses had left, he had carried without complaint, slung across his back, he now produced two cookpots, and also enough wooden cups and bowls for them all to eat and drink from, and flints to light a fire. “Force of habit,” he said, shrugging with embarrassed pleasure when the queen and princesses thanked him. “It’s not what you ladies are used to, but it will have to serve.”
As to their first meal, Pampa Kampana tells us that it was the forest itself that provided for them. A shower of nuts fell around them from above, and banana trees like those in the forest of Hanuman gave up their plenty. There were fruits they had never seen before hanging from unknown trees, and bushes of berries so delicious that they made one weep. They found a fast-flowing stream of cold sweet water close by and by its banks grew anne soppu, which was water spinach, and Indian pennywort, which could be used medicinally, to ease their anxiety, and even improve their memory. They found air potatoes and clove beans, black licorice–flavored sunberries and wild red okra and delicious ash gourds.
“So we will not starve,” Pampa Kampana said. “I also have brought seeds, which we will plant, and more varieties of food will grow. But let us talk about fish and meat.”
Grandmaster Li spoke first. He had been a vegetarian all his life, he said, and would be more than content with what the forest had granted them. Haleya Kote cleared his throat. “In my military years,” he said, “there was only one rule. Eat what you can get, whatever and wherever it is, and eat as much as you need to keep you going. So I have eaten bunnies as well as cauliflowers, billy goats as well as cucumbers, and little baa-lambs as well as plain boiled rice. I have tried to avoid cows, many of which are poorly nourished, and the meat not so good. It’s chewy—apart from any other reasons for eschewing it. I also avoid eggplant but that’s only because I can’t stand the stuff. If there are deer in the forest, spotted chital, hog, blackbuck, or other types of food that moves about under its own steam, I’m ready to hunt it down.”
Pampa Kampana’s daughters told Pampa Kampana what she already knew. “Vegetables only,” said Zerelda, smiling conspiratorially at Grandmaster Li. “Anything and everything,” said Yotshna, stepping a little closer to Haleya Kote. As for Yuktasri, she hitched up her garments, walked into the stream, and stood there up to her knees in the rushing water, with her eyes closed and her arms outstretched. “Rohu carp, katla carp, pulasa fish, now come near,” she said in a soft voice. “Pink Rani fish, walking catfish, snakehead fish, can you hear.” According to Pampa Kampana, after a few moments a fish of a species they had never seen before leaped up out of the water into Yuktasri’s arms. She brought it back to the group. “I like fish,” she said. Her mother Pampa Kampana, who had long abhorred the meat of animals, surprised herself by thinking that maybe fish would not be so bad, would not evoke the dreadful memory of her mother’s burning flesh. They had indeed entered a new world.
That first meal around the fire built by Haleya Kote, when they were all exhausted and hungry, felt like a banquet to all six vagabonds. The fact that they had abandoned their homes and fled, that the future was alarmingly uncertain, that being queens, princesses, grandmasters, or former soldiers, drunks, and underground radicals turned royal advisers meant nothing anymore, and that the forest was full of unexplained strangeness and no doubt other dangers of its own—at that warm and well-fed moment seemed not to matter. Pampa Kampana leaned against a tree, closed her eyes, and was lost in her thoughts, while the other five laughed and joked.