Stories for Children

Valley of the Mountain Goddess - Table of Contents  

 Another Christmas had arrived. Under the cloudless sky, dragonflies and children played endless games.
 A colourful function was going to take place in Rajan’s school. The Chief Minister would preside over the function.
Rajan and Sabu had become almost legends by now. The newspapers and the TV channels covered their great adventures and unbelievable survival in the jungle with great enthusiasm.
Priya’s father was giving away one hundred thousand rupees to each boy. He had announced the reward to anybody who would help the police recover his daughter.
 The function was so much delayed because Priya and Rajan had to be hospitalised soon after their return.  Priya’s illness lasted longer than anybody had expected.
 When Sabu arrived with Rajan, all the boys and girls crowded around them jostling them, vying with each other to talk to them and touch them.
 Priya arrived soon, accompanied by her father. Our heroes, leaving the crowd of admirers, ran to meet her.
 She looked very beautiful in a blue frock with white flowers embroidered on it.
 Priya’s father shook their hands and invited them to his home in the city.
 “I’m visiting your homes today itself. I would very much like to meet your parents,” said the gentleman.
 “We are planning to visit the valley of the mountain goddess once again. Would you like to accompany us?” Rajan asked his fair friend.
 “Oh, no!” she said with an expression of terror on her beautiful face.
 “Both the criminal and his accomplice are in police custody. Now there is nothing to fear in the valley,” said Sabu.
 “I love the woods more than the country and the city. The woods, our original home, are far more interesting than the country or the town,” said Rajan.
 “True,” agreed Sabu, “unless it’s spoilt by man.”

Valley of the Mountain Goddess - Table of Contents 

In his excitement Rajan had not felt the wound he had sustained on his left arm. To his relief, Sabu saw that his arm was not broken. One of the bullets had grazed the flesh causing a wound as wide as a little finger. Sabu pressed some leaves of a creeper into a paste and applied it on the wound. Next, he tore a piece from Priya’s frock and bandaged the wound. 
 Rajan had already lost much blood and he was feeling dizzy. Sabu asked him to lie down for a while.
 Now Sabu turned his attention to Priya, who was lying still as if dead.
 Opening the flask, he sprinkled some vegetable fluid on her face.
 Priya opened her big blue eyes and stared blankly at him. For a while, she seemed to remember nothing. Suddenly she sat up, her face contorted with fear.
 “Where’s he?” she asked in a whisper.
 “Don’t fear, my friend,” said Sabu. “We’ve finished him off.” 
 Priya timidly looked where her friend pointed. She could not believe what she saw. 
 She stood up.  She was all right, though her legs were shaking.
 “Let’s move on,” said Sabu.
 He helped Rajan to his feet. Taking the kitbag himself, he helped both his friends to scramble down the rock. The children wanted to get to the vallom as soon as possible and get away from the kidnapper. Although he was lying as good as dead, Priya dreaded his presence.
 At the back of his mind, Sabu had two conflicting fears. One was whether the man was dead. The second was whether he would revive very soon and threaten them again.
 He approached the fallen man and, bending over him, examined him carefully.  He was unconscious but was groaning and writhing in agony.
 Weighing his great responsibility of taking his friends home against the pathetic condition of the kidnapper, he decided to leave the criminal to his fate. 
 Pushing the vallom to the lake was a tremendous task. Priya pushed it from one end and Sabu pulled from the other. Rajan was too weak to offer any help in this matter.
 Once in the vallom, they moved north always trying to keep close to the shore. A little way ahead they found their raft and recovered the bed sheets from it. Rajan lay in the vallom and immediately went to sleep.
 The sun had become very hot and it was impossible to continue in the blazing sun. Sabu decided to land and wait for cooler hours.
 Securing the vallom to a bush, he helped Priya to land. Sabu and Priya walked up the hill, supporting Rajan between them. They spread the sheets over a flat rock under a tree for Rajan to sleep on. 
In the afternoon, they sailed for an hour more. Sabu was very careful to keep close to the shore. As soon as clouds began to race across the sky, he landed and led his friends to the woods where he chose a suitable place to camp.
 He was hungry. He knew Priya was hungry too.
 “I’ll be back in a minute,” said Sabu.
 “Where are you going?” said Priya alarmed.
 “I know you are hungry. Let me see if I can find something to eat.”
 “Don’t go Sabu, please!”
 “Don’t fear, my friend. I’ll be back in a minute.”
 “Don’t be long!”
Even though he wandered for a long time, he could not find anything fit to eat.
 Seeing a movement some distance away, he climbed up a small tree to have a better view. 
 He saw a man examining his face in the rear view mirror of a red jeep. When he hoisted himself up to the wheel - he seemed to do it with great difficulty - Sabu startled to recognise him. He was none other than the criminal they had stoned down a few hours back.
 It seemed that the path ran parallel to the lake and the jeep was going in the direction where Priya and Rajan were resting.
 Sabu covered the few hundred feet between him and his friends, running hard.
 Under the tree Priya was sitting, her eyes red and tears flowing down her cheeks.
 “What’s the matter, Priya?” asked Sabu anxiously.
 “As soon as you left, I dozed off,” she said. “I woke up hearing a vehicle passing.  When I cried for help, the jeep had just passed us.”
 Sabu roared with laughter.  Priya looked offended.
 She said, “What’s there to laugh even if I wanted to beg the help of a stranger in a jeep?”
 “Who do you think was driving that red jeep, madam?” asked Sabu.
 “Maybe it was a hunter, maybe it was a forest officer,” she said indignantly.
 “My dear friend, it was none other than our kidnapper, the villain with a rifle,” Sabu explained.
Priya shook with fear.
“Isn’t he dead?” she asked.
 “I’m happy he isn’t. But I wonder whether he would ever manage the jeep to the plains,” Sabu said.
 “We have sailed for more than five hours and covered twenty kilometres or more.  How did he reach this place if his condition is as bad as you tell me?” asked Priya.
“There’s a mountain jutting out into the lake. First we sailed in one direction and then in the opposite direction alongside its two sides. He had to travel only two kilometres to reach this spot and we had to cover more than twenty,” explained Sabu.
 A brisk wind blew away the clouds and it didn’t rain. Sabu made a fire and the three children went to sleep.
Early next morning, Sabu caught some small fish from the lake and a dozen of fat frogs from a nearby marsh. Thus breakfast was sumptuous with fish and frogs roasted over fire. Rajan ate little. His wound ached and his arm was swollen. Soon after breakfast, Sabu took his friends to the vallom again.
 Sabu paddled vigorously and Rajan lay on a bed of bamboo leaves and a sheet spread on it. Priya dreamed of home and thought of her brave friends. 
 Priya, who scanned the shores occasionally through the binoculars, suddenly cried out, “Look Sabu, I see some buildings out there!”
 Sabu picked up the binoculars the kidnapper had left in the vallom. On a distant hill, he could see a cluster of buildings. On the hilltop he saw Rajan’s house. There was a jeep on the yard.
 Rajan sat up forgetting his pain, and saw his dear sweet home a few miles away. He started singing a song of the tribesmen and his friends sang in chorus.

Valley of the Mountain Goddess - Table of Contents 
 Sabu saw Priya had not come to any harm. The gunshot had terrified her and she had fainted.
 In a fraction of a second, Sabu’s attention was on the enemy who had started running up.
 The warrior in Sabu replaced the timid boy of thirteen, and he worked out a strategy in half a minute. The first thing he had to do was to talk his friend out of his frightened inertia into confidence and activity.
 Sabu emptied the kitbag and picked up the catapult from among the various articles it contained. Handing it to his friend, he began to talk. “Look Rajan!” he said. “He’ll approach the rock thinking that we’re some distance away. Certainly he hasn’t seen Priya lying in a faint on the rock. He hopes to shoot us down before we reach the woods. We’ll simply lie down waiting for the man to come up to a distance of twenty feet from the rock. You’ll apply your catapult and I’ll throw two or three stones at him. Before he recovers from the shock, we can fell him like a log. You can achieve the almost impossible thing only if you are brave and confident. 
 “Don’t worry even if you fail in the first attempt. You can continue attacking him lying down unseen. I will attack him with stones aiming at his head. We won’t allow him to capture poor Priya, or ourselves to be shot like two stray dogs.”
 While talking, Sabu collected stones the size of apples on three different places on the rock. He also rolled six of the rounded boulders available in plenty on the hill-slope to the brim of the rock.
 Rajan lay on the rock with a few dozen sharp, white pebbles ready beside him. As the criminal ran up the hill and approached the rock, his nerves began to betray him. 
 Sabu too, lay on the rock, facing the lake and watching the man coming up. He would be a tired man by the time he approached the rock, Sabu was certain.
 When the enemy neared the rock, Sabu whispered to his friend, “He’s already tired.  Hit at the centre of his forehead just once and he will be down.”
 Meanwhile, the man was running up frantically. To capture the boys, question them and kill them was very important. His very life hung on whether he could accomplish this. If they could not be caught alive, to be shot later, he should at least eliminate them. The young devils might abandon the girl and hide in the forest. He was, in fact, as tense and nervous as the boys he wanted to hunt down. 
 Rajan’s hands began to shake. Would the giant fall with but one pebble? Would his aim that never failed desert him now?
 Sabu lay still, breathing freely, emptying his mind of all thoughts. Even if his friend failed, he should not. With a good hit on the head with a stone as big as an apple, he hoped he could down him.
 “Fire!” whispered Sabu when the enemy had reached as near as twenty feet from the rock.
 The pebble that hissed out of Rajan’s catapult and the stone that Sabu hurled, hit the kidnapper one after another, the first on his forehead and the other on his chest.
The sudden attack took the criminal by surprise. He shouted an obscene epithet and fired.
But Sabu had lain down even before the enemy thought of firing.
Their hope that they could down the enemy in the first attack itself did not materialise.  He might move sideways away from the range of their missiles. This should not be allowed.
 Sabu crawled to the left where there was another heap of stones. His friend could attack the enemy without standing up. But to throw stones with force he had to stand up inviting enemy fire.
 In another moment Rajan resumed his attack.
 Anger and humiliation shook the kidnapper. Pebbles were flying at him like hissing snakes, hitting him on his face, neck, ears, and chest. He did not get time to think. Blood was flowing down from different parts of his face and he was feeling dizzy.
 He aimed his rifle at the point from which the stream of pebbles was coming.  Although he could not see his assailant, he fired hoping to paralyse him with fear.
 Seeing that the enemy’s attention was on Rajan, Sabu jumped up boldly and launched two powerful missiles at him. Hit hard on the chest and head, he roared with pain and anger, and, shifting his aim to the new front, fired again. 
 Rajan was desperate. He had hit the giant more than a dozen times, mostly on the face, but the enemy seemed to be possessed with the devil himself.
 “I’ve little desire to do you any harm. I’ve come to take Priya home. What’s the use in our quarrelling?” said the criminal in a mild, conciliatory tone.
 Rajan tried to answer the enemy with an extra strong pebble carefully aimed at a spot between his eyes. But alas!  The string of his catapult snapped and he groaned in despair.
 Jumping up from a different location this time, Sabu sent two missiles aimed at his head.  He roared in agony and began to fire indiscriminately.
 Fired by a sudden surge of determination, Rajan rose for the first time and hit the enemy on the head with an extra large stone. As he was falling down, the kidnapper fired again, aiming at Rajan.
 The man tried to rise supporting himself on his hands. Now Sabu rolled down the boulders one after another. The first boulder bounced and flew over the fallen man. The second boulder, however, hit him hard on his chest. He pushed down all the boulders he had collected. The man was hit twice more. He started rolling down the slope shouting curses at them all the while. 
 Some twenty yards down the slope, he lay like a log without any movement.
 “Is he pretending to be dead?” Rajan said.
  “Is he really dead?” said Sabu.
 As Sabu turned to his friend, he was horrified.  Rajan was standing bathed in blood. 

Valley of the Mountain Goddess - Table of Contents 
 
 “Fortunately, he hasn’t seen us yet. At the islet he’ll inspect both the shores through his binoculars. I wonder if we could reach the other shore without being detected,” said Rajan miserably. 
Half an hour later, Priya reported that he had reached the islet. He was scanning the lake and the shores.
 “Priya, come and lie in front of us,” Sabu said, “so that he would not be able to see you.”
 “He might think we’re tribal boys, but your case is different,” said Rajan.
 Priya shifted her position close to Sabu and continued to watch the movements of the kidnapper.
 “Now he is entering the thicket,” she reported.
 They would take at least one and half hours more to reach the other shore. If the kidnapper did detect them, it would not be difficult to catch up with them in his vallom that darted lightly on the lake like an arrow. 
* * * * * * * * *
 During his usual inspection the kidnapper saw the two boys on the lake and he was quite astonished. To find a raft on the lake early in a cold November morning itself was surprising. And the two boys on it greatly aroused his curiosity.
 It seemed that there was a third boy in the front. But he was not visible. Their trousers and T-shirts were shabby and torn. The big holes on their shirts looked like continents in the ocean.
 Long untidy hair and shabby tattered clothes - the kidnapper concluded they were boys from a local tribal settlement.
 At the end of the tunnel he opened the valve and waited.
 At last the business magnate was yielding. He had said he would pay - only that he should have proof that Priya was still alive. When he received a tape with her voice and a letter from her, he would be satisfied.
 When the flow of water became normal, he opened the door and entered the pond, where a great shock was in store for him. Where was the raft?
 The raft he had seen on the lake immediately came to his mind. Could it be the one taken out from the water-lift? Had someone been watching when he entered the tunnel on the previous occasion? He rushed out of the tunnel and into the open part of the brook. Look!  Smoke was rising from the remnants of the campfire on the rock! The kidnapper watched the raft once more. It was certain that the raft was not made of bamboo poles. The white of the pipes was clearly visible.
 When the raft shook in a wave, he saw the girl’s face for a moment. The thought that the boys were hiding Priya made him mad with rage.
 The kidnapper had nothing more to think. They had not only sneaked into the valley but also rescued the hostage. Loss of a handsome amount was bad enough. If the girl reached her parents with the story of the tunnel and the water-lift and the cave, he would certainly land in jail. Perhaps he would be hanged. The raft was nearing the shore and would he be able to catch up with it?
 * * * * * * * * * * 
 “Look!  He has launched the vallom,” said Priya in anguish.
 The boys were rowing with all their might. Priya too, frightened as she was, paddled frantically. Land was only five hundred yards away. The kidnapper was miles behind them.
 The distance between the vallom and the raft was fast reducing. The kidnapper would watch the children in flight through his binoculars from time to time and continue rowing with renewed might.
 However much they tried, they were unable to increase the speed of the raft.  
 Half an hour of suspense passed. The shore was now only fifty yards ahead. The enemy’s vallom was more than five hundred yards behind.
 When they finally went ashore the enemy was only fifty yards behind.
 “He’s shooting forth like an arrow,” groaned Priya.
 Abandoning the raft, they ran up the steep slope towards the woods.
 However hard she tried, Priya found it hard to keep pace with her friends. A little way ahead, she could see the green woods. Once there, her friends had assured her, they would save her from the kidnapper. But the steep hill was quite formidable. She was gasping for breath, her mouth wide open. The wicked devil would be upon her at any time. Because of her, her two friends also would have to die. He would shoot them down and take her back to the old witch in the valley.  O…  God…
 Sabu looked back over his shoulder. The man was pulling out the vallom from the water. They had had a good start of about two hundred yards. They had another three hundred yards in front of them. Still in shooting range, their position was very precarious. He would run up and reduce the distance between him and the children further. And he would fire…  To protect the great secret he would kill all of them. 
 In front of them, between the lake and the woods, there was a string of boulders running parallel to the shoreline. Once they were past this barrier, they could run sideways hidden from his view and out of the range of his rifle. While he was looking for them among the crags, they could get as far away as possible and gradually enter the woods. 
Rajan, who was leading the way, clambered over a rock in front of him. Sabu pushed their friend up the rock, and Rajan pulled her by her hand from above.
 The report of a gun was heard, and Priya fell onto the rock with a cry. Sabu clambered up to the top and bent over Priya to see what had happened to her.