lagoon, making their way between walls of fog that rose like high banks of clouds, and moved forward along the weave of the mists.
“Circulation between the major islands is one of those powers,” said Petrus. “When the channel opens, the mist turns liquid and it is possible to sail there, like on a river. In peacetime, there are locks of mist that open and close at set times, but the Guardian of the Pavilion can change them as he sees fit. One of the great battles of this war has been over these shipping lanes. We have to intervene continuously regarding the configuration of passages, in order to bar the way to the enemy.”
“I can’t see any oarsmen or sails,” said Jesús.
“Everything in our world is propelled by intention and vision,” answered Petrus. “Through the tea, the guardian and his assistants visualize the destination, and transmit it to the boatmen.”
The spectacle shifted yet again, and the slow procession of ships vanished, to be replaced by a peculiar garden. Can we even refer to it as such, something that contains neither flowers, nor trees, nor earth? Devoid of the charm of verdancy, it was an enclosure consisting entirely of stones and sand. On a flat expanse furrowed with parallel lines, a few rocks of varying shapes and sizes formed isolated summits in the sea. On the horizon of the shore other rocks rose in a miniature range of peaks, sculpted by the powers of earth and time. Everything was motionless, but the sound of the surf could be heard; everything was inanimate, but one sensed that the landscape was alive. I cannot imagine a more peaceful spot, thought Alejandro, and he felt a sense of relief that eased the lacerating pain of the stake. He turned to Jesús; stunned, he saw a tear flowing down his major’s cheek.
“The stones are liquid,” said Jesús, almost beseechingly.
“What do you mean?” said Alejandro, failing to understand.
He looked closely at the stones and suddenly he saw it, too. A few tongues of mist billowed over the garden, and wherever they had been, the rocks had turned liquid: they preserved their form by passing from solid granite to a quicksilver lava. All around, the sand was becoming a lake, shot through with the sparkling of gems before it returned to its hard mineral surface—thus, the sand and the stones not only represented the water and the mountains, but also incarnated the solidarity of states of matter, and Jesús Rocamora, gazing at the scene, was taken back to his early life.
“We are a world of incessant metamorphoses,” said Solon. “We are transformed into horses and animals of the earth and sky but, in the past, beyond the three essences, we were every species at once.”
“Vapor turns solid, rock turns liquid, and you will also see plant life becoming fire,” said Petrus. “This is only possible because we live at the heart of the mists.”
“What is this garden called?” asked Jesús.
“The garden of heaven,” answered Petrus.
“Heaven,” murmured Jesús.
Another tear trickled down his cheek.
“In heaven, then, everything is changed into its opposite,” he said.
“The opposite is still the same, but in its extreme form, for everything proceeds from one and the same matter, with multiple facets,” said Solon.
The garden of stones disappeared and an indistinct shape appeared on the horizon, perhaps a terraced city or a high cloudbank—what are we looking at, wondered Alejandro. But they went closer and it was indeed a city of wooden houses, surrounded by undulating fields where more tea was growing, although the plants did not undulate as gently as in Inari, and the leaves were colored gray, and cold.
“Ryoan, the city of the enemy, surrounded by its plantations of gray tea,” said Petrus.
It was as vast as Katsura, with the same buildings surrounded with verandas, the same tiled gray roofs, the same trees with red flowers. There was the same beauty in the snow, the same encounter of seasons on the hospitable dark branches but, despite this, it was a horrible sight.
“There aren’t any mists,” whispered Jesús.
“There are no longer any mists,” Solon corrected him. “They were once the most beautiful on earth and I don’t know a single one of us who wouldn’t have given his life for such glory. But Ryoan was crushed by the enemy and now you see the sad result. Everything has become rigid, the void is being filled, we are losing our life force and our connections, we cannot breathe and the community is disintegrating.”
They stood for