Part 10 of 12 · 14 minThe Bear King’s Cave

The forest was very quiet.

Not a peaceful quiet. The kind of quiet that makes you listen harder. The horses' hooves went thup, thup, thup on the soft leaves. Madhu, sitting in front of Krishna, was busy looking at the ground.

"Swami," he whispered, "look. Horse hooves. One horse. Going that way. And they're deep, so the horse was running."

Krishna leaned down. The boy was right. A line of hoofprints ran off the path, pressed deep into the mud, one after another, far apart.

"Why was the horse running, Madhu?"

Madhu frowned. "Because something frightened it."

"Good," said Krishna. "Keep looking."

So they followed the hoofprints. Can you see them? Deep, and far apart, going off the path, between two big trees. Through a patch of ferns. Across a little stream, where the mud on the other bank was all churned up.

And then, stuck on a thorn bush beside the stream, fluttering in the breeze, Madhu spotted something.

"Cloth!"

It was a strip of fine silk, dyed deep blue, with a golden border. One of the elders took it and turned it over in his hands, and his face went pale.

"This is from Prasena's shawl," he said. "I saw him wear it the morning he rode out."

Nobody said anything after that. They rode on very slowly.

A little further, in a clearing where the sunlight came down in long dusty beams, they found Prasena's tall brown horse lying still on the ground. And a few steps beyond, among the trampled ferns, lay Prasena himself. He had gone to sleep the long sleep from which no one wakes. The men got down from their horses and folded their hands and bowed their heads.

Krishna knelt beside him for a moment in silence. Then he began to look at the earth around him, very carefully, the way Madhu looked for lost calves.

"Madhu," he said quietly, "come here. Tell me what these are."

Madhu crept forward, holding tight to Krishna's sleeve, and looked. In the soft earth around Prasena were prints. Big round prints, each with four toe marks and a wide pad. Bigger than Madhu's two hands put together.

"A cat," said Madhu. "A very, very big cat."

"A lion," said Krishna.

The men looked at one another. A lion. Not Krishna. A lion.

One of the elders, a man who had talked loudly in the market, cleared his throat and looked at his feet. "Well," he mumbled. "Well. A lion. I see."

"But the jewel isn't here," said Madhu, looking all around. "Prasena was wearing it. If the lion took him, where's the jewel?"

"Exactly the right question," said Krishna. "A lion does not want jewels. But a lion might pick up something shiny in its mouth, the way a cat carries a ball. Let's follow the lion."

The lion's prints led away from the clearing, over a rocky slope, through a thicket of thorns that tore at their clothes, and up into the hills. The path grew steep. The horses had to be left behind, tied to trees, with two men to watch them. Everyone else went on foot.

Near the top of a gully between two huge grey boulders, the prints stopped.

Because the lion was there.

It lay on its side, very still, its golden mane spread on the rocks. And it had not been hurt by any arrow or sword. It looked as if something enormous had simply picked it up and squeezed it.

A long, cold silence fell over the party.

"What," whispered Madhu, "is strong enough to do that to a lion?"

Krishna pointed at the ground.

All around the lion were new prints. They were flat, and long, as long as a man's arm, with five great claw marks at the front of each one, curved like sickles. They were not the prints of a lion or a tiger or an elephant. They looked a little like the prints of a man walking barefoot, if that man were as tall as a palm tree and had claws like daggers.

"A bear," said Krishna slowly. "But no ordinary bear. A bear bigger than any bear should be."

Several of the grown men took a step backwards.

The giant bear prints went up the gully. And at the end of the gully, in the side of the hill, was the black mouth of a cave. It was so big that an elephant could have walked in without bowing its head. Cold air breathed out of it, smelling of stone and earth and something wild. Far, far inside, very faintly, there was a sound that might have been a growl, or might have been the wind.

"We should go back," said one of the men. "We have seen enough. A lion killed Prasena. That is the truth. Let us go and tell the city."

"But the jewel is still missing," said Krishna. "If I go back without it, people will say, 'Krishna found a dead lion and made up a story.' And they will still say I have the jewel hidden somewhere." He looked at the cave. "It's in there. I am sure of it."

He turned to his party.

"Wait for me here. I will go in alone. If I do not come out in twelve days, go home to Dwaraka and tell my family everything you have seen."

"Twelve days!" said Madhu. "Swami, I'm coming with you!"

Krishna knelt so that his eyes were level with the boy's.

"Madhu, I need you here. You are the best tracker we have. If I don't come back, somebody has to lead these men home safely, and tell the city the truth about the lion. Can you do that for me?"

Madhu's lip wobbled. But he squared his shoulders, the way cowherds do, and gripped his stick. "I can do it."

Krishna touched his forehead, stood up, and walked into the dark.

The cave went down, and down, and down. The light from the entrance shrank to a dot and disappeared. Krishna walked on in blackness, one hand on the cold wet wall. The passage twisted and turned and grew narrower, and then, when it seemed to be about to squeeze shut, it suddenly opened wide.

Krishna stopped and stared.

He was standing at the edge of a great underground hall, lit by torches. The walls glittered with crystals. There were carpets on the floor, woven from grass and wool. There were carved stone pillars and big clay pots of honey, and baskets heaped with fruit, and the warm smell of roasting roots. It was a home. A real, cosy, lived-in home, deep under the hill.

In the middle of the hall stood a wooden cradle. Beside it sat a young woman in a simple cloth, rocking the cradle with one hand. Inside the cradle a baby bear cub was waving its fat paws in the air.

And hanging above the cradle, on a cord, swinging slowly back and forth like a baby's toy, glowing like a little sun, was the Syamantaka Mani.

The cub reached up for it and gurgled. The young woman laughed softly and began to sing a lullaby. Krishna stood very still in the shadows and listened.

"The lion took Prasena, the lion took Prasena,

Then Jambavan took the lion, the mighty Jambavan took the lion.

Don't cry, my little darling, don't cry, my little prince,

The shining stone is yours now, the Syamantaka is yours."

Krishna smiled in the dark. The whole mystery, from beginning to end, sung as a lullaby.

Then the young woman looked up and saw a stranger standing at the edge of her home. Dark skin. Yellow silk. A peacock feather in his hair. And his eyes fixed on the jewel above her baby brother's cradle.

She screamed.

The scream bounced off every wall of the hall. The torches flickered. And from somewhere deeper in the cave there came a roar so loud that stones fell from the ceiling.

Thud. Thud. THUD.

Into the hall came Jambavan, king of the bears.

He was as tall as a palm tree. His fur was grey and silver with more ages than anyone could count, and his claws were long and curved and black. Jambavan was so old that he had been there when the gods and demons churned the ocean of milk, and he had marched in Sri Rama's army to Lanka. His daughter was Jambavati, and it was she who had screamed. And now he saw a stranger in his home, reaching toward his little son's cradle, and he did not stop to ask a single question.

He roared and charged.

Krishna met him in the middle of the hall.

What happened next, the old story says, went on for twenty-eight days. Let me tell you three moments of it.

Round one. The first day. Jambavan swung a paw that could have knocked down a temple. Krishna ducked. The paw hit a stone pillar, and the pillar cracked from top to bottom, krrrrrack! Jambavan grabbed a boulder the size of a bullock cart and threw it. Krishna caught it, spun around once, and set it down gently on the floor, the way you might set down a basket of eggs. Jambavan stopped, stared at the boulder, and scratched his head with one enormous claw.

"Hmm," he rumbled. "You are stronger than you look, little thief."

"I am not a thief," said Krishna.

"Everybody who comes for that stone says that," growled Jambavan, and charged again.

Jambavati snatched up the cradle and hid behind a pillar with her baby brother, peeking out with wide eyes.

Round two. Somewhere around the fourteenth day. Now they were wrestling. Locked together, arms around each other, straining, rolling across the carpets, crashing into the honey pots, which broke, so that both of them were sticky and covered in honey and grass. Jambavan roared and threw Krishna across the hall. Krishna bounced off the far wall, landed on his feet, and smiled.

It was the smile that bothered Jambavan.

Every time he hit this stranger, the stranger smiled. Not a mocking smile, like the moon's once long ago. A happy smile. A patient smile. As if this was a game he had been waiting to play for a very long time.

"Why," panted Jambavan, "do you keep smiling?"

"Because you are the best wrestler I have ever met," said Krishna. "And I have been looking forward to this."

"Looking forward? You have never met me!"

"Haven't I?" said Krishna, and dodged another blow.

Meanwhile, outside the cave, the people of Dwaraka waited.

On the first day they heard roaring from deep inside the hill, and hugged their knees. On the fifth day the ground under them trembled and small stones rolled down the gully. Madhu sat at the mouth of the cave the whole time with his stick across his knees, and would not move even to eat, until one of the elders pushed a piece of flatbread into his hand.

On the twelfth day, when Krishna still had not come out, the grown men stood up, weeping.

"He is gone," they said. "The monster has killed him."

"He is not gone!" said Madhu. "He told us twelve days. He didn't say he'd be dead."

But Krishna had given an instruction, and Madhu, who was a good cowherd, knew that instructions must be followed. So with tears running down his face, he did what Krishna asked. He led the men back down the gully, past the lion, past the clearing, back to the horses, along the paths only a tracker could remember, all the way home. And when they reached Dwaraka, he stood in front of the king and told the truth about the lion in a small, steady voice, and the whole city heard it.

Then the city went into mourning for Krishna. And some of the people who had whispered in the market went home and could not sleep for shame.

But under the hill, the fight was not over.

Round three. The twenty-eighth day.

Jambavan's great arms were shaking. His knees were trembling. His breath came in huge gasping roars. He swung one last blow, slowly, so slowly, and Krishna caught his paw in both hands and held it. Just held it. And the king of the bears, who had never once in all his ages been beaten by anyone, felt his strength pour out of him like water from a broken pot. His legs folded. He sat down heavily on the stone floor of his hall, and then he lay back, and could not get up.

He stared up at the stranger standing over him.

"There is no one in all the worlds," Jambavan whispered, "who can do this to me. Only one. Only ever one. Long, long ago."

And then he looked, really looked, into the stranger's face.

He saw the eyes, shaped like lotus petals. He saw that gentle, patient smile. And as he looked, it was as if a thin veil lifted. For a moment the stranger was holding a great bow. There was a quiver of arrows on his back, and a loyal brother at his side, and behind him a forest, and a golden deer, and a long bridge of floating stones across a stormy sea, and an army of monkeys and bears cheering.

Big tears rolled down Jambavan's grey fur.

"Rama," he whispered. "Prabhu. My Lord. It's you."

Krishna knelt beside the old bear and took one of his huge paws gently in both hands.

"Do you remember, Jambavan," he said, "when the war in Lanka was over? Everyone who had fought for me received a gift. And when I asked you what you wanted, you said something nobody else said."

"I remember," sobbed Jambavan. "I said, 'Prabhu, I have fought beside you, but I have never once tested my strength against yours. Just once, I want to wrestle you with all my might.'"

"And what did I say?"

"You said it was not the time. You were Rama, and you had your vow. But you promised." The bear's voice shook. "You said, 'In another age, I will come to you in another form, and you shall have your fight.'"

"It took a whole age," said Krishna, smiling. "But I keep my promises. Was it a good fight?"

Jambavan laughed and cried at the same time, a huge rumbling sound. "Twenty-eight days! I have been fighting my own Lord for twenty-eight days, and calling him a thief!" He dragged himself onto his knees and bowed until his forehead touched Krishna's feet. "Forgive me, Prabhu. Forgive this foolish old bear."

"There is nothing to forgive," said Krishna. "You protected your family. That is exactly what a good king should do."

Jambavan stood up slowly. He walked to the cradle behind the pillar, where Jambavati was still hiding, and he gently untied the glowing jewel from above his little son's head. The cub whimpered. Jambavan gave it a honey-covered root to chew instead, and it stopped at once.

He placed the Syamantaka Mani in Krishna's hands.

"This is what you came for," he said. "Take it. Now I understand. It was never mine. But Prabhu, I will not let you walk out of my home with only a stone." He turned. "Jambavati. Come here, my child."

Jambavati came out from behind the pillar. She had watched every one of those twenty-eight days. She had watched the stranger catch boulders and set them down gently. She had watched him smile when he was hit, and never once hit back in anger. And she had not been able to take her eyes off him.

"My daughter is the most precious thing I have," said Jambavan. "More precious than any jewel of the sun. If she is willing, let her go with you, as your wife."

Jambavati looked at Krishna. Krishna looked at Jambavati. And she smiled, and put her hand in his.

They were married right there, in the torchlit hall under the hill. The bear king gave his daughter away. The whole bear clan came out of the side tunnels to cheer, rumbling and stamping, and the baby cub clapped his fat paws together without knowing why.

Then Krishna walked back up the long dark passage, up and up and up, with the Syamantaka Mani glowing in one hand to light the way and Jambavati's hand held tight in the other.

He stepped out of the cave into daylight for the first time in twenty-eight days, and blinked in the sunshine.

The gully was empty. Nobody was there. Only a few footprints, a small one among them, going away down the hill.

Krishna smiled. "Good boy, Madhu," he said.

He turned his face toward Dwaraka, where everyone believed he was dead, and where, even now, some people still believed he was a thief.