After about six days had passed, and she’d gone unnoticed, hiding, frightened, and when she was glimpsed, frightening, behind the bush, she decided to approach him. She had grown tired of hovering there like an animal; even the animals had begun to watch her. Although she’d been taught to believe, since childhood, that rakkhoshes were better—braver, less selfish, more charitable, and better-natured—than human beings and gods, it was true the latter were prettier. They’d been blessed unfairly by creation; no one knew why. Long ago she’d been told that it was bad luck to fall in love with a god or a human being, but the possibility had seemed so remote that she’d never entertained it seriously. The feeling of longing, too, was relatively new for her, although she was in full maturity as a woman; but she was untried and untested, rakkhosh though she was, and un-courted; and this odd condition of restlessness was more solitary and inward, she found, than indigestion, and more painful.

She decided to change herself. She could take other forms at will, albeit temporarily; she decided to become someone else, at least for a while. She went to a clearing where she was sure no one would see her, where the only living things were some insects and a few birds on the trees, and the transformation took place. Now she went to the pond to look at the picture in the water. Her heart, like a girl’s upon glimpsing a bride, beat faster at what she saw; a woman with large eyes and long hair coming down to her waist, her body pliant. She wasn’t sure if this was her, or if the water was reflecting someone else.

Ram and his younger brother Lakshman had gone out into the forest to collect some wood; she saw them from a distance. Her mouth went dry, and she snorted with nervousness; then she recalled how she’d become more beautiful than she’d imagined, and tried to control these noises she inadvertently made. She thought, looking at Ram, “He is not a man; I’m sure he’s a god,” and was filled with longing. When they came nearer her, she lost her shyness and came out into the clearing.

“What’s this?” said Ram softly to his brother, pretending not to have seen her. Lakshman glanced back quickly and whispered, as he bent to pick up his axe:

“I don’t know—but this beautiful ‘maiden’ smells of rakkhoshi; look at the gawky and clumsy way she carries her body, as if it were an ornament she’d recently acquired.”

“Let’s have some fun with her,” whispered Ram. He’d been bored for days in the forest, and this overbearing, obstreperous creature of ethereal beauty, now approaching them with unusually heavy footsteps, promised entertainment.