one of them had completed an interminably long apprenticeship, kept up a permanent commerce with trees, and made art that worked with the legacy of the ages—all things the elves believed were vital and to which they devoted themselves by tending their gardens and respecting their trees. The enclosure of the Council was sealed with a velvety moss that covered the roots of specimens so old that on the very ground they formed a miniature landscape of valleys and hills. On this late autumn day, the maple trees were ablaze; in the foreground, all along the building, a strip of sand streaked with arabesques gave the garden its waves; beyond it began the ocean of greenery. Here were a few azaleas that had already lost their leaves; there, heavenly bamboo in bunches of red berries; and everywhere, those pine trees that are pruned over the centuries until they have taken on a singular shape—their essential form, which is found inside and requires a gardener who will listen to what the tree is whispering to him, while winds and storms speak only to its bark. They resembled the trees in the Deep Woods, but at their extremities the contortions of their dark branches produced needle fascicles, trimmed by the gardener’s art to form delicate lashes, and against the dry wood they seemed to be winking, while singing a hymn that was refined and graceful—it was something to see, the openwork wings reaching out from the bare, rigid tree trunks, then branching out in the air like figures so graphic that for the third time in two days Petrus wondered whether the world were not murmuring a poem in his ear.
In the middle of the scene, the mercury waters of a pond reflected the heavens and the branches, but it took Petrus a moment to understand the strangeness of what he was seeing. He had to blink several times to adjust to the aberrant color scheme that lost its hues in the water, reflected back as black branches on a gray mirror of waves. From this alloy of metal and ink a ballet from the foundries of the universe emerged, where the streaks of pine trees performed a monochrome choreography on the liquid silver. Harmonizing with the scene were stones of various shapes and sizes that formed ageless mineral promontories and bridges along the shore or above the surface of the pond. There one knew the fraternal flow of rock and river; there one felt the tremor of a powerful vision, of a dream of mountains and shores—this is the essence of our world, thought Petrus, and the dream is so lofty that it will never die.
Beyond the pond, a lane bordered with slopes of bamboo led to a gate with a thatched roof. Ryoan irises had been planted there, and were nodding at winter camellias that had just bloomed, set in rows along the avenue and flanked, to the rear, by tall bamboo and slender maple trees. The Katsura maples are particularly elegant, because the capital of the elves is sheltered from strong winds by the rampart of its mountains of mist. Thus, the leaves are the same as everywhere, so delicately carved that their veins and edges form a living lace; but the absence of storms means that that the branches do not need to strengthen to resist the gusts, they remain slender, can bow to the breeze, languid dancers. A swarm of mist rose, slipped between the branches, then evaporated, swirling lazily on itself, and the friends mused it must be a pleasing thing, to come and admire this garden during the long winter. Similarly, they supposed there were other jewels within the annexes to the central building, for through the leaves and needles they could see its verandas. To the left of the pond, the picture windows offered a glimpse of a sunlit room and, to the rear, a raised, interior garden consisting of three large stones set on gray sand. They seemed to have been tossed in the air to fall again at the perfect distance from each other, and the precise form and precise gap between things must certainly be known to achieve such perfection: Petrus did not doubt that it was the work of the young chief gardener. It had the same sparkling purity to it as his very person, and Petrus understood how one might become fascinated. Those who wish to reach the summit barefoot must have a heaven-sent talent, he thought, astonished at