The notice had arrived the previous evening, carried by a young Vanara named Kavi who worked in the forest department — in human disguise, like many of them did — as a data entry clerk in Hunsur town.
He had slipped the notice under the Elder Council's door and then sat in the corridor shaking for twenty minutes.
The notice was forty-three pages long, printed on crisp government paper, stamped six times with six different official seals.
The short version:
The Kabini Reservoir Expansion Project (Phase 3) — approved by the Ministry of Water Resources — would extend the dam by fourteen kilometers east. Construction to begin in eleven months. All forest land in the listed coordinates would be submerged. No human settlements recorded in the zone. Compensation not applicable.
Arya read it three times.
Then she spread the survey map on the floor and put her finger on the coordinates.
Her finger landed exactly on the eastern gate of Kishkindha.
"They'll flood the city," she said.
"They'll flood more than the city," said an old voice from the corner.
Elder Bahu sat in his wooden chair like he had grown out of it. He was the oldest Vanara in Kishkindha — possibly the oldest Vanara alive. Nobody knew his exact age. He never said. But his fur had gone past white into yellow, and his eyes had the look of someone who had personally witnessed things that history books had gotten wrong.
"What's below the city?" Arya asked.
Bahu looked at her for a long moment.
"That," he said, "is what I was hoping none of you would ever need to know."
