"But how?" Arjuna pressed. "If you remember every life, then you must be different from the rest of us. You said you never forget. Are you even born at all, the way I am born?"

Krishna's eyes shone. "Now you are asking the real question."

He let the reins rest in his lap.

"Here is the deepest part of the secret. In my truest self, I am not born at all. I have no beginning. I do not grow old, I do not wear out, I do not fade like a flower or crumble like a wall. I am the master of every living thing — the spark inside the bird, the strength inside the river, the quiet inside your own chest. That part of me never enters and never leaves. It simply is."

Arjuna frowned. "Then the Krishna I see, the friend holding these reins —"

"Watch," said Krishna.

He gestured toward a travelling performer Arjuna had once seen at a festival long ago — the memory rose up sharp and bright. The man had held out an empty hand, turned it once, and suddenly a white dove sat upon his open palm, blinking in the sun. The whole crowd had gasped. The dove had been nowhere, and then it was there.

"The magician did not stop being himself to make the dove appear," Krishna said. "He chose to make it appear. It came from his own art, his own power. He was always standing right there, unchanged, smiling behind the wonder."

He turned to Arjuna.

"That is how I come into the world. I do not lose my deathless self when I take a form you can see and touch and call by name. I take charge of nature — earth and breath and bone — and step into it on purpose, by my own wondrous power. I appear, just as the dove appeared, while remaining exactly what I have always been."

Arjuna's mouth was slightly open. The field, the armies, even his own fear seemed very far away.

"So you are here," he said softly, "and also you are everywhere. You are my friend on this chariot, and also the spark in every soldier on that plain."

"Yes," said Krishna. "Now you are beginning to see."