The Little Girl Who Rode With the Sun

In a low palace at the edge of the holy city of Varanasi, when the morning light was still pink and the bells of the river temples were beginning their first slow ringing, a small girl was waiting in the courtyard.

Her name, then, was Manu. She was perhaps five years old. Her hair was tied in two thick braids that bounced when she ran. She was barefoot in the cool dust.

In front of her stood a horse.

The horse was a slim, kind grey mare named Shyama. She belonged to Manu's foster brother Nana, who was older, and who had been told, very strictly, not to let Manu ride alone.

Nana stood beside the mare with his arms folded.

"Just walking," he said. "Only walking. Around the courtyard. Once."

"Once," Manu agreed, the way small children agree to things they intend to negotiate later.

He lifted her up onto the back of the mare. Manu sat very small in the great worn saddle. Her bare feet did not reach the stirrups.

Her two small hands closed around the reins.

"Like this," Nana said, adjusting her fingers. "Hold them like you are holding a baby bird. Not too tight. Not too loose."

"A baby bird?"

"If you hold it too tight, you hurt it. If you hold it too loose, it flies away."

Manu thought about that. She loosened her fingers a little. She tightened them a little. She found the place in between.

"Like this?"

"Like that."

The mare took her first slow step. The little girl wobbled and laughed and steadied. She walked all the way around the courtyard once, with Nana walking beside her, one hand near the bridle.

Then — because she was Manu — she said, "Once more, please."

The second time around, a peacock screamed from the wall of the courtyard. It was only a peacock. They did this all the time. But Shyama, who had been thinking about peacocks anyway, was startled. She tossed her great head and began, very gently at first and then less gently, to trot.

Nana's hand slipped off the bridle.

The mare began to canter around the courtyard. Then she began to canter faster. The little girl on her back was very small and very high up and was, for the first time in her life, alone on a moving horse.

Nana shouted. The grooms came running.

Manu did not scream. She did not cry.

She heard her brother's voice, very far away, calling, "Pull the reins! Pull the reins!"

And she remembered.

Not too tight. Not too loose.

The baby bird.

Manu closed her small hands the way you close them on a baby bird. She kept her back straight. She lowered her shoulders. She did not pull.

She leaned forward, very slowly, so that her mouth was near the mare's grey ear.

"Shyama," she said, in the smallest, calmest voice she could find. "Shyama. Shyama."

The mare's ears flicked back to listen.

"It is only a bird," Manu said. "It is only a bird."

The mare slowed.

"You are a very good horse," Manu said, the way she had heard her mother say it the way she had heard her mother say tender things. "You are a very good horse."

The mare slowed more.

By the time they had gone twice more around the courtyard, the mare was walking again, sides heaving, head down. Manu was still sitting up very straight. Her small fingers were still curled gently around the reins. Her face was a little pale, but her smile was very wide.

Nana caught the bridle. He pulled Manu down into his arms, and for a long moment he could not speak at all.

"You did not pull," he said finally, his voice strange.

"You told me not to," Manu said simply.

"You could have fallen."

"I could have," she said. "But I did not."

The grooms gathered the mare and rubbed her down. Nana carried Manu to a low wall and sat her down on it. He looked at her for a long time.

"How did you stay so calm?" he asked at last.

Manu thought about it the way a small child thinks. She looked at her own small hands lying open in her lap, palms up.

"I spoke to my hands," she said. "And then I spoke to the horse."

Nana laughed — a small, surprised laugh, the kind people laugh when they have just understood something that will take them years to fully understand.

Many years later, Manu would grow up. She would marry a king. She would be called Lakshmibai. She would, on a different horse, on a different morning, with a baby tied to her back with a soft strong cloth, ride straight into the history of her country.

But tonight she is still five. She is sitting on a low wall in a courtyard in Varanasi, swinging her bare feet, telling her brother that the trick was to talk to your hands first.

Little mother, your hands are listening to you tonight. You are teaching them, in this slow steady season, how to be neither too tight nor too loose around the small one inside you. How to be like a hand around a baby bird.

Not pulling. Not letting go. Only quietly saying, again and again, the way Manu said to the grey mare — you are a very good one. You are a very good one. I am right here.