Part 44

When the old Rajah and Ranee (the young Rajah's father and mother) saw what a very beautiful girl he had brought back with him from the jungle they gladly welcomed her as a daughter-in-law.

The young Ranee would have been very happy now in her new life, for she loved her husband dearly, but always the thought of her brothers was like a weight upon her heart. She had a number of trees planted outside her windows so that her brothers might rest there close to her. She cooked rice for them herself and fed them with her own hands, and often she sat under the trees and stroked them and talked to them while her tears fell upon their glossy feathers.

After a while the young Ranee had a son, and he was called Ramchundra. He grew up straight and tall, and he was the joy of his mother's eyes.

One day, when he was fourteen years old, and big and strong for his age, he sat in the garden with his mother. The crows flew down about them, and she began to caress and talk to them as usual. "Ah, my dear ones!" she cried, "how sad is your fate! If I could but release you, how happy I should be."

"Mother," said the boy, "I can plainly see that these crows are not ordinary birds. Tell me whence come they, and why you weep over them and talk to them as you do?"

At first his mother would not tell him, but in the end she related to him the whole story of who she was, and how she and her brothers had come to the jungle and had lived there happily enough until they were changed into crows; and then of how the Rajah had found her and brought her home with him to the palace.

"I can easily see," said Ramchundra, when she had ended the tale, "that my uncles must have met a Rakshas somewhere in the forest and have been enchanted. Tell me exactly where the tree was--the tree where you lived--and what kind it was?"

The Ranee told him.

"And in which direction did your brothers go when they left you?"

This also his mother told him. "Why do you ask me these questions, my son?" she asked.

"I wish to know," said Ramchundra, "for sometime I intend to set out and find that Rakshas and force her to free my uncles from her enchantment and change them back to their natural shapes again."

His mother was terrified when she heard this, but she said very little to him, hoping he would soon forget about it and not enter into such a dangerous adventure.

Not long afterward Ramchundra went to his father and said, "Father, I am no longer a child; give me your permission to ride out into the world and see it for myself."

The Rajah was willing for him to do this and asked what attendants his son would take with him.

"I wish for no attendants," answered Ramchundra. "Give me only a horse, and a groom to take care of it."

The Rajah gave his son the handsomest horse in his stables and also a well-mounted groom to ride with him. Ramchundra, however, only allowed the groom to go with him as far as the edge of the jungle, and then he sent him back home again with both the horses.

The Prince went on and on through the forest for a long distance until at last he came to a tree that he felt sure was the one his mother had told him of. From there he set forth in the same direction she told him his uncles had taken. He went on and on, ever deeper and deeper into the forest, until at last he came to a miserable looking hut. The door was open, and he looked in. There lay an ugly old hag fast asleep. She had only one eye in the middle of her forehead, and her gray hair was tangled and matted and fell over her face. The Prince entered in very softly, and sitting down beside her, he began to rub her head. He suspected that this was the Rakshas who had bewitched his uncles, and it was indeed she.

Presently the old woman awoke. "My pretty lad," said she, "you have a kind heart. Stay with me here and help me, for I am very old and feeble, as you see, and I cannot very well look out for myself."

This she said not because she really was old or feeble, but because she was lazy and wanted a servant to wait on her.

"Gladly will I stay," answered the lad, "and what I can do to serve you, that I will do."

So the Prince stayed there as the Rakshas' servant. He served her hand and foot, and every day she made him sit down and rub her head.

One day, while he was rubbing her head and she was in a good humor he said to her, "Mother, why do you keep all those little jars of water standing along the wall? Let me throw out the water so that we may make some use of the jars."

"Do not touch them," cried the Rakshas. "That water is very powerful. One drop of it can break the strongest enchantment, and if any one has been bewitched, that water has power to bring him back to his own shape again."

"And why do you keep that crooked stick behind the door? To-morrow I shall break it up to build a fire."

"Do not touch it," cried the hag. "I have but to wave that stick, and I can conjure up a mountain, a forest, or a river just as I wish, and all in the twinkling of an eye."

The Prince said nothing to that, but went on rubbing her head. Presently he began to talk again. "Your hair is in a dreadful tangle, mother," he said. "Let me get a comb and comb it out."

"Do not dare!" screamed the Rakshas. "One hair of my head has the power to set the whole jungle in flames."

Ramchundra again was silent and went on rubbing her head, and after a while the old Rakshas fell asleep and snored till the hut shook with her snoring.