Part 43

The old Ranee and the nurse and the servants came to the well and searched under every step, but no one was there, so went away again.

All might now have been well, but the workman's mischievous little daughter chanced to come by that way again. At once she espied the banyan trees and the rose-bush. "It is a curious thing that I never saw these trees before," she thought. "I will gather a bunch of roses."

She ran past the banyan trees without giving them a thought and began to break the flowers from the rose-tree. At once a shiver ran through the tree, and it cried to her in a pitiful voice: "Oh! oh! you are hurting me. Do not break my branches, I pray of you. I am a little girl, too, and can suffer just as you might."

The child ran back to her father and caught him by the hand. "Oh, I am frightened!" she cried. "I went to gather some roses from the rose-tree, and it spoke to me;" and she told him what the rose-tree had said.

At once the workman went off and repeated to the Ranee what his little daughter had told him, and the Queen gave him a piece of gold and sent him away, bidding him keep what he had heard a secret.

Then she called the wicked nurse to her and repeated the workman's story. "What had we better do now?" she asked.

"My advice is that you give orders to have all the trees cut down and burned," said the nurse. "In this way you will rid yourself of the children altogether."

This advice seemed good to the Ranee. She sent men and had the trees cut down and thrown in a heap to burn.

But heaven had pity on the children, and just as the men were about to set fire to the heap a heavy rain storm arose and put out the fire. Then the river rose over its banks, and swept the little trees down on its flood, far, far away to a jungle where no one lived. Here they were washed ashore and at once took on their real shapes again.

The children lived there in the jungle safely for twelve years, and the brothers grew up tall and straight and handsome, and the sister was like the new moon in her beauty, so slim and white and shining was she.

The brothers wove a hut of branches to shelter their sister, and every day ten of them went out hunting in the forest, and ten of them stayed at home to care for her. But one day it chanced they all wished to go hunting together, so they put their sister up in a high tree where she would be safe from the beasts of the forest, and then they went away and left her there alone.

The twenty brothers went on and on through the jungle, farther than they had ever gone before, and so came at last to an open space among the trees, and there was a hut.

"Who can be living here?" said one of the brothers.

"Let us knock and see," cried another.

The Princes knocked at the door and immediately it was opened to them by a great, wicked-looking Rakshas. She had only one red eye in the middle of her forehead; her gray hair hung in a tangled mat over her shoulders, and she was dressed in dirty rags.

When the Rakshas saw the brothers she was filled with fury.

She considered all the jungle belonged to her, and she was not willing that any one else should come there. Her one eye flashed fire, and she seized a stick and began beating the Princes, and each one, as she struck him, was turned into a crow. She then drove them away and went back into her hut and closed the door.

The twenty crows flew back through the forest, cawing mournfully. When they came to the tree where their sister sat they gathered about her, trying to make her understand that they were her brothers.

At first the Princess was frightened by the crows, but when she saw there were tears in their eyes, and when she counted them and found there were exactly twenty, she guessed what had happened, and that some wicked enchantment had changed her brothers into this shape. Then she wept over them and smoothed their feathers tenderly.

After this the sister lived up in the tree, and the crows brought her food every day and rested around her in the branches at night, so that no harm should come to her.

Some time after this a young Rajah came into that very jungle to hunt. In some way he became separated from his attendants and wandered deeper and deeper into the forest, until at length he came to the tree where the Princess sat. He threw himself down beneath the tree to rest. Hearing a sound of wings above him the Rajah looked up and was amazed to see a beautiful girl sitting there among the branches with a flock of crows about her.

The Rajah climbed the tree and brought the girl down, while the crows circled about his head, cawing hoarsely.

"Tell me, beautiful one, who are you? And how come you here in the depths of the jungle?" asked the Rajah.

Weeping, the Princess told him all her story except that the crows were her brothers; she let him believe that her brothers had gone off hunting and had never returned.

"Do not weep any more," said the Rajah. "You shall come home with me and be my Ranee, and I will have no other but you alone."

When the Princess heard this she smiled, for the Rajah was very handsome, and already she loved him.

She was very glad to go with him and be his wife. "But my crows must go with me," she said, "for they have fed me for many long days and have been my only companions."

To this the Rajah willingly consented, and he took her home with him to the palace; and the crows circled about above them, following closely all the way.