The two friends spend all their time together in the shade of the tree, sharing delicious mangoes and fine conversation.

In the desert region of India called Rajasthan, a magic tree used to grow at night around campfires when men talked quietly and at children’s bedsides as their grandmothers put them to sleep. The tree was as invisible as it was sturdy, and over the generations people learned that they may never be able to see the magic tree, but they could always count on hearing it rustle while they were together.

They heard it best when a story was told well. Its seeds spread when the story was loved, remembered. These seeds were so powerful that they grew up into magic trees themselves. From these trees, more seeds spread and more trees grew. Today in Rajasthan, although the sun bakes the earth so hot and dry that it turns to sand and young women must keep silent behind their pale yellow veils, the invisible trees’ voices fill the land with a thick forest of sound.

They say these trees have been growing in India as long as people have known how to talk. They grew up naturally in the people’s struggle to describe the mysteries of their world. An elderly widow takes up the task when she begins, “Once upon a time….” She remembers a story she heard from her grandmother, and, as she looks into the young faces of her own grandchildren, she tries to create a place in their language and fancies that will convey the same sense.