Somaprabha and Her Three Suitors

Three marvels, one rescue, and only one claim that counts.

A young woman is stolen by a demon, and three suitors, each with a wondrous gift, join to bring her back: one finds her, one carries them across the sea, one fights the demon and bleeds to free her. When she is home safe, whose gift has truly earned her hand? You judge first, then the king does.

The Burning Ground

The Vetala was in its tree again, and again the king went up to fetch it. He knew the weight of the thing now, the cold and the stillness of it, and he no longer wasted breath on anger. He tied it fast, took it onto his shoulder, and walked. Behind his ear the spirit stirred and began to talk.

The Three Gifts

In a great city lived a young woman named Somaprabhā, daughter of the minister Harisvāmin. She was much sought after, and she had set a hard condition of her own: she would wed no man who was not a master of one great thing, matchless in valour, or in knowledge, or in magic craft. Three young men came, each claiming one of these, and each was remarkable in his own way.

The first was a seer. He could tell where any lost thing lay, and what any distant hour held, whether past or still to come.

The second was a builder of wonders. He could make a chariot that crossed the sky and set you down anywhere in the world in the space of a breath.

The third was a warrior. No swordsman living could stand before him.

On the very day the three were to be wed to her by turns, the rakshasa Dhūmraśikha came and carried Somaprabhā away to his fortress beyond the sea.

The three suitors met in their grief and did the one thing that only the three of them together could do. The seer looked into the distance and named the demon's fortress. The builder raised his flying chariot, and it bore all three across the sea in a moment. And at the gate the warrior went in alone, and fought the rakshasa, and killed it, though it nearly killed him first, and carried Somaprabhā out alive.