When Guru Nanak Dev Ji was a little older, his father found him a job.
Take the buffaloes out, said Mehta Kalu Ji. Take them where the grass grows long, and you can be out under the open sky, which is where you like to be anyway.
So that is what he did. Every morning he walked the cows and the buffaloes out past the last houses of Talwandi, to where the grass was thick and green. They put their heads down and ate. And he sat.
He sat with his eyes closed, mostly. Sometimes he sang. He felt the Lord as close to him as his own breathing, in the grass and the water and the wide warm air, and he would stay like that for hours while the buffaloes wandered and chewed.
The man who owned the land around Talwandi was called Rai Bular Ji. He was a good man and a fair one, and he liked hearing about holy people. He had heard many stories about the son of the Bedi house, but he had never seen anything himself.
One morning Rai Bular Ji rode out to hunt, and as he passed the trees he saw Guru Nanak Dev Ji asleep in the shade of one of them. He rode on, and he was away a long time.
When he came back it was afternoon. The sun had swung right across the sky. The buffaloes were still grazing, and Guru Nanak Dev Ji was still asleep under the tree.
Rai Bular Ji stopped his horse.
Because this is what he saw. Every shadow in that place had moved. The shadows of all the other trees had swung round with the sun, the way shadows do between morning and afternoon. And the shadow of the one tree above the sleeping boy's head had not moved at all. It lay exactly where it had lain in the morning, across his face, keeping the sun off him.
All this time I have only heard about this child, he said out loud. Today I am looking at it myself. It is as though somebody has been put on duty here, to keep him in the shade.
His companions looked, and looked again, and said that it was so.
Rai Bular Ji climbed down and bowed his head, and had Guru Nanak Dev Ji woken gently. And when Guru Nanak Dev Ji stood up, he looked at Rai Bular Ji with such warmth that the man felt his whole heart lift.
That evening Rai Bular Ji sent for Mehta Kalu Ji. Your son is a pearl, he said. He has come to us from somewhere very high. Give him respect. Never say a hard word to him. Never scold him.
Some days later it happened again, in another way.
It was late morning. The buffaloes were out in a green field, and Guru Nanak Dev Ji had lain down at the edge of it and closed his eyes. The sun climbed, and it grew hot, the hard white heat of the middle of the day.
And out of the grass came a cobra.
It came straight to where he was lying, right up beside his head. And it lifted itself, and spread its hood out wide, and held it there, over his face, between Guru Ji and the sun. Like a small dark umbrella. Like something standing guard.
Rai Bular Ji happened to be passing that way again. He glanced over and did not understand what he was seeing. Then he looked properly, and his heart jumped, and he told his men to frighten the creature away. They shouted. The cobra dropped down and slid off into the grass and was gone.
Guru Nanak Dev Ji woke and stood up.
Even the snakes, said Rai Bular Ji, make shade for him.
He walked over and put his arms around him. And then came the thing Rai Bular Ji remembered longest, longer than the shadow and longer than the snake. Holding him, he felt a gladness rise through him so sweet that he began saying the Lord's name out loud without ever deciding to.
It was like embracing God, he said afterwards.
You are the Lord's own beloved, he said.
And the buffaloes went on eating, and the afternoon went on being warm, and at the end of it Guru Nanak Dev Ji walked home for his dinner as always.
Goodnight. Even the shadow of a tree knows who to look after.