by K. T. Tomb
The three finally left the forest. They headed for Mithila to visit King Janaka. Seeing the sage, Janaka greeted him saying, “Have I told you about my daughter?”
“Please tell me about her,” responded the sage.” —Ramayana
***
Psalms 23
Sykes stood agog, and looked wildly at the skies. “Say that again, John—no, wait. Mandeep, get Pikeham.”
John had become wide awake when he realized the truth of it, and he immediately went to wake the captain. Sykes had still been up, attempting with Mandeep to draw a rough map of the land that they had seen so far, on a sheet of Dr. Pikeham’s paper. Mandeep returned with Pikeham in tow, rubbing his eyes as he stepped from grass onto the sand of the beach.
“There are few things on this earth I wouldn’t give to have a chest of tea from China at this moment, gentlemen. What’s with this entire hubbub? More dinosaurs?”
Sykes nodded to John, who took that as his cue. “We’ve missed something important, hugely important since we arrived in this place three days ago. So intent were we on exploring the land fearing our safety and repairing our ship, we have forgotten to find out where we are.”
“I thought that was the point of sending out scout parties? At the cost of those three men’s lives, poor devils.” Pikeham said.
“No, not where we are on this island, where the island is on earth!” John pointed to the skies, where beyond the sparse clouds a few stars lay twinkling in the velvet black of space. “We’ve had cloud cover for three nights, except for a moment last night, but I fell asleep. I lived in India these past three years, sleeping under the sky. I know all the stars, in Indian and English. Mandeep, find me āgrahāyaṇī, the deer’s head. Dr. Pikeham, I assume you can find Hydra?”
Pikeham and Mandeep dutifully looked about them, taking a moment to orient themselves based on the last position of the sun before it had dipped beyond the horizon. They turned again and again, growing ever more furrowed in the brow. Pikeham broke first.
“I cannot see it. In fact, I recognize not one constellation in the sky,” he said.
Mandeep similarly could find nothing. “Allahu Akbar, we are truly lost! We are beyond the sight of God,” Mandeep said. “What does this mean? What will become of us now?”
All eyes fell to John, and he shifted uncomfortably on his heels. He did not like the burden of peoples’ gaze, especially when they clearly expected him to have some form of answer. “I honestly don’t know. We know we need to repair the Nannie Dee, but we don’t know where we are, except for in this land which is filled with terrible lizards from before history. We’ve seen the mountain to the west, right? Gupta said it was too steep to climb, but there must be a way. If we can just get high enough, we can see if we are on an island, and maybe see where to go next, if there is any land away from these monsters.”
He was about to continue when the quiet of the night was rent by the cries of men, and a terrible roaring. The camp of the crew, spread out along the thin area of land between the beach and the tree lines was in uproar. In the moonlight John saw a terrible beast, tall as the broken mast of the ship. It stamped out of the trees, scattering men and tearing through the pathetic wooden staves they had erected to mark the perimeter. Pikeham yelled out in alarm, and Sykes shook John by the arm.
“The rifle, man! Where’s the rifle?” Sykes drew an ancient flintlock pistol from his heavy belt, and grimly strode up the beach, shouting orders to his crew who could hear him.
The rifle was by the mat of palm fronds he had been using for a bed, and which was currently being occupied by a fifteen foot lizard. The monster had huge jaws, clearly a different species than the predators that had hunted the giant herbivores at the plain. Mandeep ran after Sykes, drawing his machete and whooping a battle cry, almost running into men fleeing the giant terror. John followed him, thinking hard. If he could get to the rifle, then maybe it would be powerful enough to destroy the beast. The monster bent at the neck, crouching low on powerful hind legs to bite a sailor clean in two. John thought it might have been Rajeev, but then he saw his friend, trying to light a torch. The flames sprang into life under his flint stroke, and Rajeev swung the brand in the giant reptile’s face, which roared as a cannon.
“Rajeev!” John had to shout to make his voice heard over the din. “Keep it up! Look, it doesn’t like the flames!” His words were punctuated by the sharp crack of Sykes’ pistol, a red wound appearing on the beast’s chest, but it appeared to be too small, or the beast too stupid, for it to notice. Another sailor grabbed a piece of wood from the dwindling campfire and jabbed it wildly. The dinosaur merely raised a huge foot and crushed the annoyance beneath its full weight. The man screamed and even brave Rajeev backed off. John ran round the rear of the roaring animal, leaping over its thick tail to grab the rifle and ammunition from the rock by which he had laid his bedding. The dinosaur seemed to sense him, or perhaps it saw him with its great eyes on the side of its head, giving it better peripheral vision than a mere man. John ran as fast as he could, into the trees as the dinosaur whipped around and bit down at the spot he had just vacated. He had the rifle, but it was unloaded, and would take him a good thirty seconds to ready the device. If he stayed on the ground, he would surely be eaten, so John did what must have come naturally to his distant ancestors when faced with a predator—he climbed. His muscles were strong and supple, and he easily swung on to the lowest branches and worked his way up. If only the crew could hold out. Thirty feet from the ground, he stopped climbing and began to load, for the first time casting a glance to the beach. The dinosaur was wreaking havoc, Sykes appeared to be now lying unconscious with Mandeep trying to drag his prone form away—no easy task as the weight difference between the two men was considerably not in Mandeep’s favor. Rajeev and three others were waving burning torches at the dinosaur, but were unable to neither quell the animal nor scare it away. John fumbled for a bullet from his pouch, but found his hands were trembling, and he dropped it to the ground. He tried again, and this time held onto the piece of rifled lead. The ramming arm would not seem to fit in the barrel, waving around under the twitching of John’s nerves. While he scrambled to get the weapon loaded, another sailor died, crying and wailing as the terror ate him in two bites. It roared, head to the sky, and John had a clear sight of the beast’s head. He fired, the noise of the gunshot cracking through the air, as loud as the roaring dinosaur. The roars stopped; his shot had hit home, but the beast still stood, small forelegs grasping at the air with claws that were still as big as John’s forearm, but looked almost comical on the giant reptilian torso. From his position in the trees, actually looking down on the beast as it was lit from the fires on the ground, John could see that this creature, like the other dinosaurs he had seen, was feathered—not the delicate feathers of a bird, designed to trap air for flight, but thick, broad quills no doubt for retaining heat. John knew enough about reptiles from living in India to know that the cold-blooded animals basked in the sun, heating their bodies so they could move easily. He guessed that a similar principle ruled these dinosaurs. His hands were a little steadier when he found his next bullet, the memory of his army training assisting his movements, smoothly ramming the bullet to the bottom of the barrel by the percussion lock. The dinosaur was now solely fixated on the small ape in the tree that had pierced it and charged, ramming its bony skull into the base of the tree. John nearly fell from the tree, the rifle sliding out of his hands and only being prevented from dropping to the floor by the leather strap that caught on his wrist. The tree swayed, and he was for a moment reminded of the storm out to sea as the branch he sat on tried its best to buck him off. The dinosaur braced the tree with its front claws and snapped its jaws; forty carving knives slashing a foot or so short of catching John’s leg. It roared its displeasure up at him, and its tail whipped left and right, knocking down Rajeev who was beating it with his torch. His head collided with a tree with a sickening thud, and he fell motionless to the ground.
“Rajeev!” John shouted, and the beast bellowed again. John threw his prayers to any god that would listen to the wind, and shoved his rifle into the dinosaur’s mouth, squeezing the trigger as he did so. The jaws clamped shut as the gun fired and it was wrenched from his hands, the dinosaur staggering backwards, shaking its head violently from left to right and back again, scattering the few remaining uninjured sailors before it. The giant reptile roared once more, but the roar was gargling and blood spilled from its mouth—then it fell, dead, back legs twitching as those of chickens often did when their heads were removed. John slipped down from the tree, his legs buckling, unable to support his weight through sheer terror. When he could stand, he ran to the tree where Rajeev lay, and rolled him over onto his back. The man was alive! Leaving his side, John picked up an ax from by the body of a crushed sailor. He hacked at the neck of the monster that had slain so many. His blade barely broke flesh, but he swung again, and again, yelling with every blow and slowly forcing his way through flesh and bone until, covered with gore and sweat, with a wild-eyed look of a madman, he had decapitated the beast.
The now-recovered Rajeev joined him as he severed the last few strips of flesh and the head rolled away under its own weight. John turned to see the rest of the crew, or what was left of them at least, gathered around him in a semi-circle. Captain Sykes stepped forward and gently took the ax from John’s hand. “That’s enough, lad. You got the monster. Help us now burn our own men who fell.”
In his anger he had, if not forgotten his slain comrades, at least had the desire to desecrate the body of his enemy, forcing his grief aside. It returned and he sank to his knees, exhausted.
“Cap’n, I’ve traveled all over India, and lived with Christians, Muslims and Hindus, and I know not which god we have upset to bring us to this hell. We are surely cursed,” he said.
“Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death,” Sykes said, and John joined him. “I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff, they comfort me.”
“Psalms 23, lad. Got me through wars and sunk ships and losing my crewmates, and by God the creator, he’ll get us through this.” Sykes slapped him on his shoulder, and began instructing the kindling of the funeral pyres that had already been lit the day before. He handed the ax to Rajeev with a word in his ear, and Rajeev set about hacking the limbs from the dinosaur’s corpse, two men assisting him to obtain the meat from the carcass. John walked down the beach and into the sea, the salt water around him running red as he washed the stink and gore from himself. At least, he thought, the fires of the pyres should be large enough to prevent scavenger animals coming to take the meat of the giant. He couldn’t contemplate eating the monster himself, not yet. He knew he must; the supplies they had at sea that had been brought ashore would only last a few more days, and that was with the greatly diminished crew. How many of them were left now? No more than a dozen, he guessed. Less than half of their original complement. If they didn’t find a way off this land and back to sea soon, there would be no crew left to make the journey, of that he was sure. He bent his knees, and plunged his head into the cooling waves, salt water stinging welcome tears to his eyes.
Chapter Eight
The king spoke: “A few years ago a portion of my land was being plowed and I found a divine child in a furrow. I called her Sita and adopted her as my own daughter. She has grown into a beautiful young woman. Many princes have desired her hand in marriage. But I wanted the man who married my Sita to be a man of great strength and righteousness. To prove his strength, this man would have to lift and string the ancient bow of Shiva. No man has shown the strength to even lift this bow.”
The sage turned to Rama and said, “There is a bow belonging to King Janaka that I would like you to string.” —Ramayana
***
Funeral Pyre
The crew of the Nannie Dee were restless that night, partly through fear, partly through the light cast by the funeral pyres and their accompanying stench.
Every noise was a new threat, and with ears pricked by adrenaline, there were dozens of invisible monsters running through their minds every minute, every hour. Small fires cooked the meat they had taken from the great toothed dinosaur, but they had had to move camp some distance away from the carcass as many small scavenging animals began to creep into the camp to steal a morsel. Once the dead had been cremated, Sykes gathered his remaining crew together. The next morning would split the party, half of the crew remaining under Mandeep’s instruction to finally shape a new sail for the ship, while Rajeev, John, Dr. Pikeham and Captain Sykes himself were to climb as high up the mountain to the west as they could, and attempt to find a bearing for the ship to travel in. Perhaps, if they climbed high enough, they could see the other side of the island, if they indeed were on one, or another island, or some land where the dinosaurs could not reach them.
John had partaken of the meat from the giant creature they had slain the night before. The flesh needed treating with flame to remove the thick feathers, the skin had proven resistant to all but their sharpest blades and the meat itself seemed coarse and sinewy. The taste was rather gamey, which actually did not surprise John all that much considering the wild bird look to the creature, albeit on a huge scale and with the jaws of some massive crocodilian monster. The head alone was spared the butchery on Dr. Pikeham’s orders as he required it as evidence of what terrible things lived on this land. John thought it a little presumptuous of the good doctor to think that they were ever making it back to England. His heart lay heavy on him, and in the middle of the night he lay awake, watching the flames of the campfires and listening to the screeching of the night terrors, both in the woods beyond the beach and in his own heart. He knew for sure that he had doomed them all with his apostasy. He had never denied Christ in so many words, and he enjoyed the comfort the Bible provided. That being said, the sutras had entranced him with their wild stories about the creation of universes and brave and clever gods. Had he been cursed by the Christian pantheon for his heresy? It certainly seemed that he had brought his new crew to the very literal jaws of hell. Surely, creatures such as these giants were the agents of Satan himself, and he was just as surely damned to be consumed by them.
“If only I had a cross,” he wept aloud, “or if only my faith in Ganesh was absolute and I could be a true Hindu. Instead, I am neither and for that, all the gods hate me.” He felt stirring in the dark beside him, and for a moment he feared another encounter with the devils sent to plague him. Instead, it was just the waking of Rajeev and Mandeep, who had been disturbed by his sobs.
“You Englishmen are a strange people,” Mandeep said, wiping sleep from his eyes. “Your religion is not so different from ours; we have fundamentally the same god, you and I, but by different names. Why is it then that you always fear the wrath of the creator? When a Muslim sins—and we do from time to time, you know, as we are merely men—we simply must recognize what we have done to offend, commit oneself not to repeat the offense and rectify it, and ask Allah for forgiveness. Oh son of Adam, were your sins to reach the clouds of the sky and were you then to ask forgiveness of Me, I would forgive you, it says. But the English, you are all about eternal damnation, unless you can buy your way out. I tell you this, Allah would not punish me just to destroy you.”
“But what if Allah and the Christian God are not the same? I am a jealous God, the Bible says. I turned away from Christ, and now I must be destroyed!” John threw himself into his hands again. Mandeep raised his eyebrows at Rajeev over the prostate man’s head in a gesture that passed responsibility for speaking next to the Hindu, who shrugged in his calm manner and placed a gentle hand on John’s shuddering shoulder. “I don’t know much about either of your gods, and even I don’t know all of my own. But I will tell you a story that my wife tells my children when they are feeling like everything is too much.” Rajeev cleared his throat, and John raised his head with red eyes from the sand.
“One day there was a gr
eat king of the gods, by the name of Indra. This great king had defeated a demon, and desired a great palace to be built. The problem was that no matter how grand the carpenter made his palace, it was never big and grand enough. This made the carpenter very grim, as he was also an immortal and would never be done building the palace if Indra had his way. Down the carpenter went to see Brahma, the creator god. As you might know, Brahma sits on his lotus, which is the symbol of all divinity and power and grows from the navel of Vishnu, the sleeping god who dreams the whole universe, and tells him of his plight.” Rajeev spread his hands out wide, clearly copying the movements his wife would make to her little children. “Brahma kneels down to Vishnu and whispers in his ear. The next morning, Vishnu goes in disguise to Indra’s palace and says to the Indra, ‘I have heard that you are building a palace like no Indra ever has.’ To which the Indra says, quite naturally, ‘What do you mean? I am the only Indra!’ And Vishnu laughs. He says, ‘I see all the Indras before you, you come and go. Remember Vishnu sleeps in the cosmic sea, and the lotus of the universe grows from his navel, and on the lotus sits Brahma. Brahma opens his eyes, and a world appears, he closes his eyes, and a world dies. Each world has an Indra, and imagine that’s just one world, what about all the countless galaxies and worlds beyond. There is no great sage in your court that could count them all.’ And just then, so it goes, a column of ants march through the palace, and Vishnu laughs. The Indra is already greatly shocked, and now this stranger is laughing. ‘What does this mean?’ says the Indra. ‘All these ants,’ says Vishnu, ‘are all Indras from a past life. They rise up, kill a demon, build a palace, and then return as the lowest thing.’ Vishnu leaves, and the Indra is totally depressed. He thought he was the biggest thing, the great king, when in fact he is not the whole deal at all! He stops building his palace, lets the carpenter go, and retires to meditate at the feet of Vishnu, asleep in the sea of the universe. Well, this is no good either; the kingdom falls into disrepair and Indra’s wife is neglected. His wife, she is unhappy, and the priest of the gods comes to her aid. The priest says to Indra, ‘Now you listen here. You are in a position of the King of the gods, which is a very great thing, You are a manifestation of the mystery of Brahma in the field of time, and this is not a privilege to throw away lightly. Appreciate this, and deal with life as you really are.’ And the kingdom was saved.” Rajeev sat down again, as he had stood up to act out the dramatic parts of his story. Mandeep clapped.
