An old blind man and a little girl were walking a hill path in the dark.
She was his granddaughter, and she was leading him, and they were going to Anandpur.
O child, he said, your steps are so slow. My feet keep stumbling and I am out of breath. Are we going up a mountain?
Not a mountain, Grandpa, she said. It slopes a bit. While I could see I went round the stones and the holes. Now it is dark and I cannot see them.
A cold wind came up off the water.
Where has this cold come from, he said. I am worn out, and now I hear a stream, and that frightens me. I am blind and you are a child. These hill streams take a lion's feet from under him.
Grandpa, she said, I am hungry too. There is no flour left in the bag. There might be some bread but it has gone hard.
He stopped.
It is a wicked thing, he said, that a girl like you is out here because of my sins. If I had seen properly while I had eyes, I would not be chasing inner eyes now.
Grandpa, she said. Do not talk like that.
If somebody would only say one word to me, he said. Forgiven. If I heard that word I would forget every bit of this.
Grandpa, she said, you are the only person I have. When you talk sadly it frightens me. Please stop.
How far is the stream?
Very near now.
Is the water running fast? Can you tell how deep?
I cannot tell yet, Grandpa.
Then his stick fell, and she bent for it and gave a small cry, because her back had stiffened from walking so long in the cold.
Let us keep walking, he said. We must not lose heart. Watch for any hut where a holy man might let us stop. And if there is none, we walk.
All right, Grandpa.
I never learned how to pray, he said, after a bit. That is the trouble. I was always busy with something else.
And the girl said the thing that saved them both.
Uncle used to say that if we turn our mind to the true Guru Ji and say Waheguru, Waheguru, then the true Guru Ji will come and help us.
So they said it, and they went on.
On that road something bad happened. They were caught by men who were no good, and taken away from each other, and the girl was sent off to work in a stranger's house.
She got away. She waited until it was nearly dark, slipped out, and ran until she found her grandfather and got her arms round him.
Grandpa! she said. I have come.
O daughter, he kept saying. O daughter. Thanks be to the Lord.
Lion child, he said. Sikh child. Guru Ji is great. Guru Ji is everywhere. He heard me crying. He has put the two of us back together.
Father always said Guru Ji helps when you are in trouble, said the girl.
Then, walking on and talking, they lost the path.
The sun came up. And when it did, they found they had walked straight back to the very men they had run from, who were standing there staring at them.
The girl went stiff as a goat that has seen a lion.
Neither of them had time to say a word.
Because out of nowhere came a sound: thuk. An arrow went into the stump of a tree standing a little way off.
Then they heard hooves. Dust was coming up along the road.
He has come! shouted the girl, clapping her hands. Grandpa, he has come! Beloved Guru Ji has come!
The hope arrived so suddenly, in the middle of all that fear, that the old man's mind simply stopped. He forgot everything. Something in him that had been dark for years went light.
And there, in the full morning sun, the blind man's eyes opened, and he saw.
He saw the one with the plume, the one who sets prisoners free, whom he had been walking through the whole night to beg one word from.
They were both saved that morning, the old man and the child.
And he had come all that way to ask for forgiveness, and got it, and got his eyes as well.