other three looked at him aghast and he seemed pleased with the effect he’d had.
“How could humans have anything to do with the fluctuations of the mist?” asked Paulus, puzzled.
“It’s a long story,” said the piglet.
He wanted to continue, but suddenly something shook the barge violently. A murmur of astonishment spread over the channel and the boatmen closed the communicating canals. The shock woke the piglet’s parents, and when they found their son in the company of the threesome, they came over, smiling, and bowed amiably. In their human shape, they were indecently good looking, as dark as their child was blond.
“I hope our young chatterbox hasn’t been too much of a bother,” said the father.
“Not at all,” said Paulus politely.
“Quite astonishing, that sudden jolt,” said the mother, frowning.
She had a deep voice with something of a drawl, which Petrus liked.
“Your son told us you are from Ryoan,” said Paulus. “I’ve heard it’s an incomparable city.”
“You are very welcome there,” she replied, “we are always happy to share the splendor of our dark mists. May I ask where you are from?”
They didn’t have time to reply because new instructions required the passengers to remain seated and the three wild boar elves returned to their seats. But after a moment, as nothing particular was happening, everyone began once again to enjoy the gentle pleasure of being on the water. As for Petrus, he was thinking. Perhaps you are one of the pieces of the puzzle that is being assembled, the hare elf at the teahouse had said—and, indeed, he felt as if they had drifted into the center of a game that was beyond them. Even though the wild grasses in the channel were hallucinations, a product of his exaggerated consumption of tea, they disturbed him as much as real writing would have done. And even if they are chimeras, shouldn’t they make us see something? he wondered. Then, exhausted by all these incongruous considerations, which were giving him a headache, he fell asleep. But before nodding off he had one last thought: what an adventure! And as he slipped into sleep, he smiled.
At last they reached Katsura.
“Our first real lock,” said Paulus.
The boatmen woke the travelers shortly before the channel began to close again behind the barges, which stayed motionless on a patch of liquid mist while other mists, to the rear, returned to vapor. Facing them was the void of still more mist: the lock. The boatmen sought their positions in successive adjustments of a few centimeters, the channel grew ever narrower, and before long the boats were lined up side by side on the last square of liquid in the world. No sound, no movement; the mist coiled on itself as time was suspended and everyone held their breath. Not a single native of this world was ignorant of the fact that the lock at Katsura was dangerous, and although it had not happened in five centuries, a distracted mooring maneuver could throw barges, boatmen, and voyagers into the void from which none would return.
After a long while the boatmen relaxed, just as a sound came to their ears, and the mist lifted to reveal, far below them, the great city bathed in light. They went slowly down toward Katsura, following a vertical trajectory which had given its name, the Well of Mist, to the lock, a well of half a league that was used ten times a day in both directions by one to two hundred boatloads of pilgrims. It was the middle of the afternoon and the November sun shone above the gray roofs. There was no sign yet of the lovely soft snow that covers the province from the end of the year until the first days of April; plum and maple trees blazed with their autumn colors, and from above, Katsura looked as if it were on fire; tall gingko trees added amber touches, like will-o’-the-wisps frozen in flight. Beyond them was a landscape of trees in fog with a few isolated villages here and there, but what dominated were the vaporous mountains the city backed onto. They overlooked the snowy peaks that circled the city and created such an imposing lofty landscape that Katsura seemed to be floating there like the survivor of a shipwreck. Closer inspection of the city revealed it to be more solid and firmly anchored than rock, because the mist, in contrast, gave it a vigor that no solid ground could have conferred. As the descent continued, the mist