they had to confront the destroyer of the centuries-old vegetation, obsessed with stones and perfection, who was no longer in hiding and was openly campaigning against humans.
“How can you deny the facts?” he asked the Head of the Council. “How can you ignore that their unbearable frivolity is destroying the paradise that was entrusted to them and, through the contagion of the bridge, is also poisoning our own paradise?”
“There are no simple causes or remedies to any illness,” replied the hare. “Designating a providential enemy will not save our mist.”
“You are deluding yourself with chitchat while criminals are running about the countryside with impunity,” replied the gardener.
“Decline is not a crime, but a challenge,” replied the guardian.
“Nothing will give us back our mists if we do not act.”
And this went on, tirelessly, while Petrus, year after year, saw the elves grow despondent and the words of the gardener infiltrate their hearts, although there was not yet a single councilor who was willing to adopt a radical position regarding the human question.
When destiny takes an abrupt turn, there are no flowers to distract us from it. It was a fine November afternoon and he was reading, ensconced on a soft cushion in a recess in the library, looking out at the only garden that had been spared the mineral mischief of the elf from Ryoan. He read and sighed intermittently, vaguely interested and bored by the autumn elegies in a collection that was part of a great classic of the mists, the Canto of the Alliance, where the natural affinities of mountains, forests, and clouds were celebrated over and over. It was illustrated ad nauseam with magnificent ink drawings where, against a background of misty summits, trees gracefully lost their leaves, and birds, joined by the writing of poetry, flew high in the sky.
Neither spring nor summer nor winter
Know the grace
Of languid autumn
He sighed again and, taking the volume with him, went out into the first courtyard where he sat in the sun, his back against an old plum tree. It was very mild and, after a few additional pages of maple trees blazing in the setting sun, he was about to doze off when something in his reading startled him and made him sit up, his heart pounding and his nose quivering. He stared at a camellia flower before him that a gardener from the first shift had left on the moss, not seeing it, went back to the text, shook his head, read it over and over, endlessly.
the rebirth of the mists
through two children of snow and November
the rootless the last alliance
“By the mists,” he murmured at last (which, in elfin, is the equivalent of “holy mackerel”).
He did not know which was more upsetting, that he’d found in these lines the inspiration of those he’d once spontaneously created, under the influence of the wild grasses in the channel, or that for the first time he was in the presence of such an unthinkable text. From his reading, he could swear that this poem did not celebrate anything that existed, did not evoke anything that had ever happened but, on the contrary, described the affliction of the mist and outlined the remedy as if it had anticipated and conceived them. Three lines in an unknown story and life was radiant, in league with a heart swollen with a new intoxication so intense that he could feel that heart pounding fit to burst, and he could no longer see what was there before him—and precisely, there before him, observing him in silence, stood the Head of the Council. How long has he been standing there? wondered Petrus, leaping to his feet. The sun was setting, smoothing the moss in the courtyard with its low-angled light. He felt a chill and blinked his eyes as if emerging from a long dream. He stood there for a few moments before the silent Head of the Council.
“What are you reading?” asked the Head, finally.
Everything that had gathered in Petrus’s mind during the hours he’d remained motionless rereading the poem now metabolized and, stunned by the words coming from his mouth, he said:
“A prophecy.”
The Head of the Council raised an eyebrow.
“A prophecy?” he said.
Petrus felt as thick as his own broom. Lowering his eyes on the book he was holding in his hands, he mustered his courage.
“A prophecy,” he said.
He read the three lines out loud, and every word pierced the cool late-afternoon air like a dagger.