The Forest of Enchantments

by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni

So I satisfied myself by standing on the terrace on monsoon afternoons, watching the silvery rain bathing the tops of distant trees. Lightning cracked open the sky, spilling its longing into me. Sometimes I dreamed that I was walking the wilderness with its swaying grasses, its leaping, golden beasts, the earth-mother the way she’d been before people bent her to their desires.