Krishna smiled, and there was something vast behind his eyes — not pride, but the calm of someone who has watched the seasons turn ten thousand times.

"You have asked a good question," he said, "and it deserves a true answer. Listen. You and I, Arjuna, we have both walked this earth many times before. This is not your first life. It is not my first either. We have each been born again and again, like the same actor stepping onto the stage night after night, wearing a different costume each time."

Arjuna stared. "Many times?"

"More than you could count," said Krishna. "You have been a child before this child you remember being. You have had other mothers, other names, other friends whose faces you have utterly forgotten. The river of lives runs far behind you, all the way out of sight."

"Then why," Arjuna asked, "do I not remember any of it?"

"Because that is how it is for most beings. When you fall asleep at night, you do not carry the whole day into your dreams — much of it simply slips away. Birth is a deeper sleep than that. Each time a soul is born anew, a curtain falls over all that came before. You step onto the stage, and the past lives go dark behind you."

He laid a hand briefly on Arjuna's shoulder.

"But the curtain that falls for you does not fall for me. This is the one great difference between us. I remember. Every life, every age, every morning like this one — I hold them all, clear and bright, the way you hold this single sunrise. So when I tell you I taught this path to the sun at the dawn of the world, I am not speaking of a story I read somewhere. I am remembering a morning I was there for."

Arjuna was quiet for a long moment, the field forgotten.

"Do not feel small for forgetting," Krishna added kindly. "The forgetting is no fault of yours. But now you know that the friend beside you has been beside you far longer than you ever guessed."

And the chariot felt, all at once, very old and very safe.