exercise, which meant he rummaged at random in the floral display, the professor looked vexed and, shaking his head, murmured some vague excuse before grabbing the flower from his hands.
“You just put a white tulip under an ode to three scarlet camellias,” Paulus said to him. “Can’t you try and read, at least?”
“If only we could eat them,” sighed Petrus in return.
In fact, he did nibble at them now and again, in secret, for not only was he crazy about the perfume of flowers, but also their taste, and he knew all the ones that were edible. You must understand the extent of Petrus’s extravagance: elves do not eat much in the way of flowers or leaves, any more than, by nature, they eat any part of an animal, since the former are the source of life and the latter are their brothers—and so a feast of that kind was tantamount to devouring the very cause of their existence or worse yet, devouring themselves, and Petrus was always very careful to hide when he indulged in his vice. Clover, violets, and nasturtiums featured in the trio of his preferences, but he wouldn’t turn his nose up at a wild rose, either, and they grew in abundance around the family home, because his mother knew of nothing more refined than their fragile corollas above their black thorns. As Petrus feared his mother more than any other secular power on earth, he was doubly mindful when pillaging the woods. As a result, he was never caught, and remained awkward when it came to subjects that did not interest him, but crafty and furtive when his desire was aroused.
This time, Petrus was sensitive to the charm of the stream. Night was deepening and something inside him was slowing down. A flake landed on his paw and he gazed at it with curiosity.
“No one knows who we are looking at,” said the hare elf, startling him.
He looked again at the ash, so light and potent in its near-immaterial state.
“Are they our dead?” he asked.
She handed him his clothes.
“They are our dead,” she replied.
Petrus regretfully allowed the ash to fly away and he took his clothes back, covering himself just as he was transformed into a man.
“You are a high-elf,” said Marcus. “This is the first time we’ve met a representative of your house.”
She motioned to them to sit down by the three empty bowls. A high-elf, thought Petrus, that is why there is an invisible burden on her shoulders and a perfume of hidden worlds all around her. Maybe that’s what I am looking for.
“It’s not what you are looking for,” she said. “Your destiny is elsewhere, but I don’t know how to see it. Unprecedented things are happening in the mists these days, and we have become attentive to unusual circumstances. Perhaps you are one of the pieces of this strange puzzle that is being assembled.”
Paulus and Marcus adopted the expression of the well-brought-up who must not be rude, and Petrus himself, although flattered, seemed doubtful.
“Puzzle?” he asked courteously, all the same.
“The Council issued a new alert yesterday in several provinces where the mist is in difficulty,” she said.
“Has it affected Hanase?” asked Paulus.
“As you were able to see from the lock, our mist is intact,” she replied.
A shadow passed over her face.
“The day it is affected, we can bid farewell to this world.”
She made a graceful gesture with her right hand.
“But these are merely passing nighttime thoughts.”
They saw that the bowls had been filled with a golden tea that flickered with the same light as the bronze sides of the basin.
“One of you must choose a flower and recite a poem,” she said.
Marcus looked mockingly at Petrus.
“Would Mr. Puzzle feel up to honoring his studious past?” he asked.
Astonishingly, Mr. Puzzle did feel up to it. Was it the strangeness of the situation, the hollow feeling in his stomach, or the touch of the flake of ash—it seemed to him that the inanity of his years of schooling was being driven against the cliffs of the present moment, releasing a trembling corolla from its gangue.
“I would like an iris,” he said.
An iris appeared, lying between the bowls, smaller than those you are accustomed to seeing in your gardens, its white petals dotted with pale blue, its heart deep purple, and its stamens orange.
“A Ryoan iris,” she said. “They are to be found mainly in the province of Dark Mists, but one can also occasionally come upon them around here. In the tradition of