The moon lingered in the Irish sky and, despite the heavy downpour submerging the fighting, it shone through the storm clouds. Corpses were piled into dunes of red blood; black blood covered the wheat of Shinnyodo, and the fields here and elsewhere were littered with flesh and mutilated bodies.
And then.
And then Maria entered the battle.
BOOK OF BATTLES
The moon above the plain of Ireland was bloodred, and Clara played a whisper of notes lighter than snowflakes. Everyone heard the story they contained, the story of snow and the soul of the country that met like plum flowers on winter wood and transformed the clay of combat into flames. Then Maria’s power brought the melody to life and the clay from the field actually seemed to be germinating and rising up into a tree of fire that did not burn, but warmed the soldiers’ bodies and hearts. The cold spell passed, the ground turned solid, and everyone looked at the burning clay covering the fields and stopping the battles. It began to snow.
You must understand who she was, Maria Faure, the little girl from Spain and Burgundy, born of two powerful elves, but brought up by the old grannies in The Hollows. To the totality of art that Clara incarnated, Maria responded with her power to know the totality of nature. Since childhood, she had been in constant contact with flows of matter that took the form of impalpable traces, and this allowed her to see the radiance of things. She recognized no other religion than that of violets, and was stunned that other people could not hear, as she did, the hymns of the sky and the symphonies of the branches, the great organs of clouds and the serenade of rivers. Through this magic, during the first battle on the fields of Burgundy, she had processed and transformed the sketches traced by living things the way one would paint on a canvas of desire. In this way, she had known how to turn the earth and sky upside down in order to open the breach through which the elfin fighters appeared.
It was snowing over the countryside of Ireland and, while the magnificent, idiotic snowflakes were falling, the clay of the massacres became a fire where pain was assuaged.
Clara’s music became more tragic in tone.
At the other end of reality, through the power of the young women, the bridge and the pavilion at Ryoan began to burn, and their dull gold rose into the sky in magnificent spirals.
In Nanzen, through the bare openings in the pavilion, they saw the red bridge fade away. It hesitated then vanished like a mirage, while the mist over the arch shot upward in bursts of silver, then hung suspended, uncertain of its death.
In Ryoan, the golden smoke turned to gray, dirty streaks.
Nanzen trembled, and Solon said:
“They have drunk their last tea.”
The final message from the enemy passed through the mist.
Mad, insane as you are! What choice have you left us? History is not written with desire, but with the weapons of despair!
Father François felt an icy shiver down his spine then a furtive presence slipped into his mind.
Give us the words, said Clara’s voice.
What words? he asked.
The words of the wordless, answered Clara.
BOOK OF PRAYERS
He pictured himself, after the battle, back on the hill where one of the brave village lads had fallen. He was a country boy, hard-working, more stubborn than a stone, high and mighty in speech, with a rough tenderness, a reveler when feasting, but solemn in friendship, who loved his wife with a love that stood straight as a candle under the stars. As a peasant, he’d been poor, as a man, rich with the only treasure that cannot be owned, and when he died in the fields of Burgundy he gave the priest his confession. It was the dream of a wooden house opening out onto the forest, where everyone would aspire to know love and a peaceful existence; a dream of a land that would belong to itself; of hunting that would be as just as it was beautiful; and of seasons so grand they would make one feel grander. It was a story of desire and hunts, a dream of a woman and her scent of leaves and lemon verbena, the fantasy of a simple heart festooned with mystical lace. This brave fellow’s name was Eugène Marcelot, and at the time of his death, he had never learned to read or write. The inner flames rising on the marl