The Blue Jackal

A hungry jackal, chased into a nearby town by a pack of dogs, stumbled in the dark into a washerman's yard and fell straight into a huge vat of indigo dye. The dogs, startled by the splash, scattered and fled, and the jackal — soaked from nose to tail in deep blue — crept back to the forest at dawn, exhausted but alive.

When the other animals saw him, they froze in terror. None of them had ever seen a creature like this: blue as a monsoon sky, silent, strange. "It must be some powerful being sent from the heavens," a deer whispered, and soon all the animals, from the smallest rabbit to the great tiger himself, had gathered to bow before him.

The jackal, quick-witted, saw his chance at once. "I am no ordinary jackal," he declared grandly. "I have been sent by the forest gods to rule over all of you, and I name myself Rangaraja, King of Colors." Not one animal dared question him, and from that day, the blue jackal ruled the forest as its king.

He appointed the tiger and the lion as his personal guards, kept the wolves as his hunters, and lived like royalty — all while quietly avoiding his own kind, the jackals, ashamed of what he had been before and fearful they might expose him.

But one still evening, as the sun went down, a distant howl rose up from a pack of jackals gathering for their nightly cry. The blue jackal, forgetting himself for just a moment, felt the old, familiar urge rise in his throat — and before he could stop it, he threw back his head and howled along with them.

Every animal in the court fell silent. The lion turned slowly. The tiger's eyes narrowed. In an instant, the truth was plain to all of them: their "king" was nothing more than an ordinary jackal in a strange coat of dye.

With a furious roar, the animals he had ruled over turned on him at once, and the blue jackal fled into the forest, never to be seen at court again.