Krishna kept his eyes on the field, but his voice grew soft, the way a voice does when it remembers something very old.

"Arjuna," he said, "you are not the first person to stand where you stand. You are not the first to feel his arms grow heavy and his heart grow afraid. Long before this morning — long before your grandfather's grandfather drew his first breath — there were men and women who wanted one thing above all else. They wanted to be free."

Arjuna looked up.

"Free from what?" he asked.

"Free from the heavy chain that wraps itself around a person who works only for what he can grab," Krishna said. "Free from the worry that sits on your chest at night, whispering, *but what will I get, what will I get.* Those old seekers learned a secret. They learned that you can do hard work — fierce work, frightening work — and still keep your heart quiet inside, like the still water at the bottom of a deep well."

A breeze moved across the mist. Somewhere a horse whinnied.

"They built. They farmed. They taught. They fought, when fighting was their duty. But they did it all without clutching at the fruit. They planted the tree and let the tree grow as it would. And because of that, the chain never closed around them. They stayed free even with their hands deep in the world's work."

Krishna turned at last and looked at Arjuna directly.

"You think I am asking you something strange and new. I am not. I am asking you to walk a path that has been walked smooth by the feet of countless wise ones before you. They knew this. They lived this. And so, knowing it too, you should do your work — not your own clever new way, but the older way, the way of the old ones who came before."

The conch shells were silent now. The whole field seemed to be waiting.

"Do as they did, Arjuna. Step where they stepped. The path is ancient, and it has always led home."