all the elevated thoughts he’d been having since his arrival in Katsura, and mentally he scoffed at himself. This moment of distraction changed everything, and he no longer saw the mineral garden in the same way as before. The arrangement that had so delighted his gaze now seemed fossilized, and the stones emitted a message of death which gave him the shivers. Purity is not always the best ally of the heart, their guide had said, and this absence of love, now so obvious, made his hair stand on end.
“It’s magnificent,” said Marcus.
Petrus saw he was looking at the stones.
“It’s cold,” he replied.
“It’s frozen,” said Paulus.
“Yes, it’s cold and frozen,” said Marcus slowly, as if he were waking from a dream.
“How may I assist you?” asked a voice behind them.
They turned around and found themselves facing a tall female elf with red hair and light gray eyes.
“I am the Council’s steward,” she said.
Turning into a squirrel, she was such a striking replica of his mother that Petrus, fully aware that he’d left his Woods without saying goodbye, blushed violently from the tips of his claws to the top of his ears.
She looked at the cloth he was clutching in his paws.
“Is there something wrong with your clothing?” she asked.
The crimson squirrel in which Petrus was trapped gave out an indeterminate gurgling sound and Paulus, feeling sorry for him, came to his rescue.
“There was an incident during the crossing,” he said.
“That is the first time I’ve ever heard of an incident involving clothes,” she said.
“The same for us,” said Marcus, looking at Petrus mockingly.
But when he saw Petrus’s despair, he resumed his serious air.
“Our hostess from the Wild Grasses asked this temporarily mute gentle-elf to introduce himself to you,” he said.
“Yes, but why?” she asked.
“Were you not informed?” asked Marcus.
“We were simply informed of the arrival from the Deep Woods of two squirrels and one bear,” she replied.
Dumbfounded, they fell silent.
“Do you not know, either, why you have been sent?” she said, turning into a bay mare with rounded hindquarters.
She studied them, thoughtful.
“The Wild Grasses never do things without a reason,” she continued, “particularly during such a troubled period.”
“Might you have some work for me?” asked Petrus, his voice so clear that Paulus and Marcus stood there gaping.
“I don’t see what’s so astonishing about that,” he added, in response to their stupor. “I intend to stay here, and I have to make a living.”
“What can you do?” she asked.
It was his turn to stand there openmouthed.
“Well,” he said, “I don’t know. Anything, I imagine, that doesn’t require any particular skill.”
“You are not good at job interviews,” she said, somewhat put out.
She thought for a moment.
“These days, with the elections, I have enough to do without trying to make sense of all this. I may as well keep you on hand, after all.”
She frowned.
“Does he really not know how to do anything?” she asked Marcus and Paulus.
They looked embarrassed and she sighed.
“Can you sweep?” she asked Petrus.
“I suppose so,” he replied.
She clicked her tongue, annoyed.
“Tomorrow at dawn, west door,” she said.
Then, turning into a squirrel and looking just like his mother when she was angry, she turned and was gone.
“You really have some nerve,” said Marcus.
“Are you serious?” asked Paulus. “Do you really want to stay in Katsura and spend your days sweeping paths for the Council?”
“I am serious,” answered Petrus in a huff. “I don’t see why you won’t believe me.”
They looked at him doubtfully for a moment.
“Let’s go,” said Marcus in the end, “let’s leave this place, we have to find an inn before nightfall.”
They agreed, and set off. Before leaving, Petrus cast one last gaze at the books and scrolls floating in the air, and it seemed to him they twinkled faintly in a knowing farewell.
“See you tomorrow,” he murmured.
Finally, they went through the gates and back into the streets of the city.
That is how Petrus’s life in Katsura began and, although the time has come for us to proceed more speedily with our tale, and return to the protagonists of the last battle of the war, we must say a few words about those years in the capital of the elves, simply because the world they embodied is now gone forever. For the last seven decades, those who have been in charge of the intrigues of fate relentlessly asked themselves this burning question: should they die to make way for a new era, or had their very world come to its end?
“We always believed that individuals and civilizations