Nothing had come of it, and King Shivnabh had gone back to his work and his waiting.
Then one day his minister came to him with something strange.
Your Majesty, there has been a saint in the old garden for three days now.
Nobody sent for him. Nobody invited him. He walked in by himself and sat down, and there are two others with him.
And the gardener says that the moment his feet touched that ground, the garden started coming back.
The king looked up.
It has been dead for years, said the minister. You know it has. Dry sticks. And now there are green shoots on the old branches, and buds, and there are flowers coming.
Also, in three days, he has not eaten anything at all. His companions cooked a little rice and lentils. He has not touched food. And he is not weak and he is not ill.
And here is the third thing, said the minister.
Everybody we have sent to test him has forgotten to test him.
They go in ready with their questions. They see him, and the questions go out of their heads. Their minds go quiet, and they feel glad, and their heads bow down without being told to. And when they touch his feet they start saying the Lord's name out loud, in a tune, and they cannot stop. And they come back out with tears on their faces, and if you ask them anything at all they say the same thing.
Remember your Lord. Love your Maker.
Every single one of them, Your Majesty. Every one.
Does he give a name, said the king.
He does not speak, said the minister. He answers nobody. Whoever goes in to catch him out comes out unable to say a word.
Then the minister said: I went myself, today.
And Mr. Joker came with me, and he is still sitting there. He would not come away. He said, go and tell His Majesty to come, and not to doubt for one second.
He said to me: if that man simply told me there is a Lord, I would believe him, and I would leave off everything I have believed until now.
Your Majesty, I have been pulled toward him myself. He does not seem to belong to this world.
The king sat very still.
I bowed to a false one, he said, and it left me so wretched that I promised myself this head would never bow again except to the true Guru.
And now I want to go.
Your Majesty, said the minister, this one is real.
Yesterday they sent dancing girls into the garden to break his meditation. And he looked at them and said only: sing the songs of the Lord. Say His Name.
And they sat down. All of them, right there. And when they came out a long time later they were weeping, and their whole bodies seemed to be saying the Lord's name over and over, and they have not stopped since.
The garden is not like anywhere else now, said the minister. You walk in and your heart opens up and everything goes cool and quiet, as though every leaf in the place were saying it too.
It is him. Mansukh Ji's Guru. Your Guru Nanak Dev Ji.
And the king could hardly stay upright.
Oh, he said. I am a wretch. I put my own master on trial.
And then he went. And this time nothing in him held back and nothing in him checked, and when he came into that garden and saw the face he had been waiting years for, he knew it before anybody told him, exactly as Mansukh Ji had promised he would, all those years ago at the other end of a long wait.
Goodnight. The garden had been dead for years. It only needed somebody to come and sit in it.