Sita: A Queen Roams Free

As each year on warm summer nights at dusk, the wise owl perched upon the dying branches of the Ashoka tree to tell a story. Before long the crowds gathered; foxes and wolves, hyenas and bears, and finally the big cats. Today, she began, I will tell you about The One, who lives within us but in the shadows. Some call her a witch, others a fantastical creature and for some, she is only a figment of our imagination. But she exists. You may have seen her, or heard of her, and very few have spoken to her but today, you will know her story.

Deep in the forests, where even the brave panthers fear to tread, lives a wild, wild woman, a creature like no other. She leaps and bounds from tree to tree, her long hair flowing behind her, she eats off the trees, the land, the waters and sleeps on the cool rocks by the streams or deep within the caves, high up in the mountains.

The circling kites whisper that she sits atop high branches, nursing tiger cubs on her breast, and Hueen the Hyena who we know fears little, even saw, with his own eyes, deep gashes, as though by a tiger’s claw, run down her back and dared, yes he dared, to asked her when she was washing by the stream, ‘Who, pray, who did this to you? Who, who, who?’ And do know what she said?

A hush descended around the group as they shuffled closer to listen. Why, she laughed! She laughed and said, do I ask you who you take behind the rocks on a moonlit night? Why I hear you grunt and groan all night long? Who you hold tight between your spindly legs? With this, she hissed and spat at him and disappeared before his eyes into the dark night.

All eyes now turned to Hueen the hyena who mumbled under his breath and wiped his snout with a paw, irritably. At this, a little rabbit fearfully asked, but, but, who is she, this wild one? Where did she come from? No one knows for sure but she calls herself Sīta. They say she was once queen to a man who they worshiped as a god. And once, a long time ago this god and a demon fought a terrible battle over her. The demon had captured her, desired her, but he would not touch her until she came to him of her own accord.

An appreciative murmur ran through the crowd. And then? And then, after many trials and tribulations, the king finally rescued her, with some trickery, however victory was his. But alas! It is said that when this king, this god, this love of her life, returned to their kingdom, a great test awaited him.

To be king, or to be hers. And she lost. And thus betrayed, and thus bereft, she, without a backward glance, left the world of humans forever and returned to the earth from whence she sprung. But the earth, a friend to all our kind, softened with her tears and gave her a boon. She could shape shift and roam free forever. Free from the world of men, free from virtue and vice, and free from her mother, the earth itself. She could be a mango tree, laden heavy with fruit, or the monkey that feasts in it, she could be a serpent, hunting for prey on her belly through the darkness of the night or a tiger, motionless within the tall grass, lying in wait.

And now, this is how she spends her days and nights, a leaf blowing though all of eternity. ‘But...how...but why does only the tiger get to mate with her, wise owl, why did she pick him?’ growls the panther, somewhat regretfully.

The owl dropped his voice. ‘One night when the wind howled and the skies raged, she was dancing atop the mountains in the distance, her feet, her legs covered in mud and as she moved, she picked up fistfuls of the earth and rubbed them on her naked body, lost in ecstasy, in song, and a tiger, the largest we have in these parts, he dragged a carcass all the way up the rocks, bounding over the cliffs, through the trees that grow so close together, underneath the brambles and bushes, until he finally found her, and panting, lay his gift at her feet; and from that day, on moonlit nights when the skies open up in fury, you can hear the roar of their lovemaking far down into the plains and know that it drives terror into the hearts of men.

But what was the gift, oh wise one? At this, the owl, her story nearly done, prepared to take flight. Her great wings spread across the sky, casting a shadow over all the creatures looking up at her, open mouthed. The gift was the rarest thing you could ever see, a creature so beautiful, so divine, so swift, that only a god could hunt it; I do not know why she wanted it, but it seems it was all her heart desired. A beautiful, golden, deer.