The Life of Elves (26 page)

“All fronts are alike,” said Petrus to Clara. “This storm looks just like war, and what you see is what every soldier before you has seen.”

The mists began a new movement, not swirling around Maria anymore, but emerging from her own palms. A colossal bolt of lightning hung in the sky and illuminated the destruction of the region. Then the little girl began to whisper quietly to the sky of snow.

And then . . . And then from one end of the land to the other there was a flow of all the dreams, in a magnificent symphony that Clara could see on the screen of the sky, and from each soul she could see the pearls of desire embroidered on the taut canvas of the firmament, because each soul, after the despair of their earlier resentments, felt reborn and began to believe in the possibility of victory.

But it was with wonder that she contemplated Gégène's dream, how he had conjured a great enchanted land for Lorette and himself, with a wooden house surrounded by beautiful trees and a gallery that opened onto the forest. But it was not just the dream of a man who aspires for love and a peaceful existence. It also evoked the vision of a land that would belong to itself, of a hunting tradition that would be fair and bountiful, and of seasons so abundant that a soul would feel similarly elevated. Lost little girls would be left outside the doors of simple folk so they might grow up amid greatness; there were images of old women rich with the austerity of their intimate acquaintance with the hawthorn bush; and there were coarse yokels drunk on the mission of ensuring a peaceful night's sleep for little girls from Spain; and in this place they lived in a harmony that does not exist in a pure state, but which dreams isolate on the periodic table of desires—and that was how the border between earth and mind could be abolished,—an abolition which, ever since the dawn of time, has been called love.

Because Gégène Marcelot was a genius at love.

This genius of his gave birth to the vision that shone brighter than all the others, through the circulating of dreams with which the sky of snow was flooding the land. Life was hard, and they were so happy! That was what every man said to himself, and every woman even more so, while the lads were marching against the devil's archers with renewed cheer, and the priest looked up at the clouds and felt strengthened by the restoration of his faith. Everywhere the same joy that came from the rebirth of dreams was accomplishing its work of courage and hope. Jeannot gazed from the farmyard out at the battlefield, and through that war for the first time he could see his brother as he had been as a child. For so many years a grimace of excruciating suffering had possessed his brother's face and prevented Jeannot from knowing the taste of happiness, but now on this day happiness took the shape of a woman's body and a white shoulder on which to weep his pent-up tears, while all his former taboos went up in the smoke of the storm. He knew then that he would soon be married and beget a son, and with that son he would talk about his brother and about the blessed hours of peace; turning to the mayor, he slapped him joyfully on the back.

“Ah, doesn't it make you feel young again,” said Julot in response to his warm gesture.

The mayor was savoring the remembered poetry of the moment before the hunt, when the forest belongs to the tracker preparing it for the others. But the cold dawn paths had been infiltrated with a new magic. He saw a man with a painted brow speaking to a motionless deer, and the animal's coat radiated perfection. Finally, since all of them had the same revelation of their dreams, in the sky of Burgundy there was an almighty commotion: porcelain eyes mingled with richly colored partridges, and with sprints through the woods and kisses in the night and blazing sunsets echoing with stones and clouds, while in the prism of every image and every wish all life could be found. So many tears held back, so many secret sorrows . . . They had all known the salt flavor of tears, they had all suffered from loving too greatly or not loving enough, and locked away a part of themselves behind the protective yoke of hard work. And every one of them felt, nailed to the tender wall of his heart, a sinister burden of regret or a dusty way of the cross, and every one of them knew what the constant hammering of remorse will do to a man. But this day was different. Somewhere deep inside they had shifted three forgotten cloves of garlic, and everyday scenes had been transfigured into pictures of beauty. Each one of them had recognized his dream in the sky and found determination and strength in it, and the most powerful dream of all, which was Gégène's, made an offering containing still more bravery and splendor, so much so that the lads who were following him told themselves that their martial quest was esthetic, too, and that their killing would be without mercy but without rage, so that the land might regain its innocent splendor.

 

They reached the fallow fields in the east, then went around the hill whence the arrows had come flying over their heads before entering the flow of the storm to be transformed into lethal bombs. Now these were arrows made of good wood and feathers, and they were all glad to be doing battle with an actual real enemy whose fighters were sheltering like cowards behind the black wall. At that moment, Gégène gestured to them to position themselves in such a way that their quarry would neither hear them nor sense their approach. So they went as close as they could and dealt with the archers as if they too were archers, but with the instruments of modern hunting in their hands: they let their bullets fly out on the wind. Oh, the beauty of the moment! It was combat, but it was art, too. For a second, as they stood facing the mercenaries, they saw a vision of naked men whose breath embraced the breath of a land scarcely touched by their light stride; then each of them became clearly aware of his nobility as an archer, the honor they owed to the forests and the fraternity of trees, and they knew that for all their fingernails might be black, they were the true lords of these lands.

Only he who serves is a lord
, Gégène might have said, if it had been time to pull out a cork rather than shoot a villain. The moment passed but the awareness remained and, in the meantime, in the space of two minutes, the surprise of the attack got the better of half of the bad lot, while the other half retreated as quickly as they could and disappeared around the other side of the hill. In actual fact, the enemy hightailed it like rabbits, and in spite of the villagers' initial urge to give chase, they decided not to, because their main concern was to get back to the village. They cast only a quick glance at those who had fallen, and they found them to be as hideous as any mercenary had ever been. Their skin was white, their hair dark, and on the back of their fighting uniform was a Christian cross, and the lads could not rally until they had closed the eyes of all the dead. Then they tried to make their way as quickly as possible to the church. But the waters barred the roads and there were no more paths they could follow safely on foot.

 

In the clearing, the story Clara had given to Maria took the shape of a sentence she murmured to the sky of snow, and it spread into three tree-like branches, the three powers of her life. It was neither in Italian nor French, but only in the stellar language of stories and dreams.

 

in you are all the dreams and you walk on a sky

of snow under the frozen earth of February

 

Maria knew the earth through the man who had taken her in as his daughter on the first night, she knew the sky through the woman who loved her like a mother and connected her to the long line of women, and she knew the snow through the fantastical mists, an offering from the original story of births. But Clara's words had freed the formula of earth, sky and snow, and Maria could see her dream taking shape. The red bridge flashed in her vision, glittering with the force fields of the unknown world, whence the misty cities drew their light and their life force. An ethereal joining took place inside her. Her inner worlds reconfigured, their junctures absorbed in the birth of an organic wholeness dissolved from every layer of reality.

This reconfiguration then spread from within her, into the vast world outside. The piano fell silent and in a gesture of absolute solidarity, Maria obeyed the story gifted to her by the piano. A breach as long as the world opened in the snowy sky, and out of this glistening abyss came strange beings, who settled on the frozen ground. But what astonished the peasants was the reversal caused by Maria's magic: the sky had become the earth and the ground had taken the place of the clouds—not only that, but one could move about, living and breathing there much as usual. They even understood that it was this reversal that caused the sky to split in two, allowing their defending army to pass through. But more than that, they were awestruck by the feeling they had of walking on clouds, while the combat took place beneath. André had removed his cap with its ear-flaps and, standing next to his daughter, he was torn between pride and terror, as if he had been split into two separate, equal parts.

The clearing was covered with their allies.

 

“Maria is the new bridge,” said the Maestro. “This is the first time a detachment of the Army of Mists can to fight in the human world and that the elves can implement their laws there.”

 

The earth seemed to have recuperated, and fifty or so strange beings stood in a circle around Maria. Some looked like fantastical wild boars, others like hares, squirrels, or a massive, heavy creature that must have been a bear, but others looked like otters, beavers, eagles, thrushes and every possible kind of known or unknown animal, including—this they realized with amazement—the unicorn of fairy tales. All the newcomers, however, were composed of an essence of man, and that of a horse, and their own specific part, and the three did not meld, but swirled together in a choreography which Maria and the lads recognized. André looked at his right-hand men. They too had doffed their hats and, while they stood to attention with some swagger, they felt their blood run cold as they gazed at the strange army. But they would have died sooner than relax their stance, and ramrod straight they awaited their orders, there amidst the unicorns and bears. There was a heavy silence until one of the newcomers from the sky stepped away from his fellows to come and bow down before Maria. He was a fine bay horse, his tail turning into a flickering will-o'-the-wisp when his squirrel essence prevailed over the others, and on his human face golden sequins prickled his gray eyes. He stood up straight again, and addressed Maria in the incomprehensible language of the fantastical wild boar from days of old.

 

In Rome, the ancestor escaped from Clara's hands and grew and grew until it was the size of a man, then it began to spin around the room, and with each spin an essence came loose from the ball of fur before returning, still visible, to the dance. Clara saw a horse, a squirrel, a hare, a bear, an eagle, and a big brown boar, and many other creatures, all part of the waltz, until an entire host of aerial and terrestrial beasts had appeared. Finally, the ancestor came to a halt, while the others could still be seen. The Maestro had risen to his feet and he placed one hand on his heart. Petrus's eyes were shining.

“This miracle you are seeing—we no longer dared hope for it,” said the Maestro. “In the olden days, we were all ancestors. Then gradually they became lethargic, and we were born deprived of certain essences, until we only contained three of them, and we began to fear they might weaken still further in the future. We do not know what has been causing this disappearance, but it goes hand in hand with the disappearance of our mists. However, there are at least two things of which we have had a forceful premonition. The first of these is that your births are part of this change, but they are a force for the Good; the second is that a certain harmony has been lost forever, but it will be possible to reconstruct it in a different way. The evil that has divided nature may possibly be thwarted by the alliance.”

And she saw tears in his eyes.

 

In the clearing in the east wood, the emissary from the Army of Mists was speaking to Maria, and through the power of the ancestor and the revival of a time when species had not yet been divided, the little French girl and the little Italian girl understood what he was saying and what they were saying to each other. As for the men, they didn't understand a thing, but waited silently for Maria to tell them what fate had in store.

“We have answered your call,” said the bay horse, “although you don't need us in this battle. But the opening of a new bridge is a crucial event, and we must understand the hopes and powers it will enable.”

“I need your help,” she said, “I can't manage on my own.”

“No,” came the reply, “we are the ones who need the breach you have created, where the laws of our mists are in force. But you are not alone, and insofar as the battle is concerned, the sky, earth, and snow are on your side.”

“You are not alone,” said Clara.

“You are not alone,” echoed Petrus.

“The snow is with you,” added Clara.

And these words, at last, triumphed over all the others, because the snows of the beginning are like the snows of the end, they shine like lanterns along a path of black stones and they are a light in us that pierces the darkness. A familiar warmth enveloped Maria just as night was falling on an unfamiliar scene. A column of men was advancing through a lunar twilight disturbed every so often by the echoes of faraway explosions, and she knew these were the soldiers of the victorious campaign that would forever condemn them to the memory of their dead, while at this very moment the cold was striking down legions of these brave men that the greatest war in history had not been able to kill. One of the crucified men raised his head and Maria knew what his imploring gaze implied.

It began to snow.

It began to snow with a fine sparkling snow, a curtain that spread quickly from the clearing to the flooded steps outside the church. It was impossible to see either the sky or the ground; they had melded in a thickness of beautiful, pristine snowflakes, a miraculous warmth streaming to the ground. Oh, the caress of heat at last, on those frozen brows! Had they not all been men they would have sobbed like raw recruits. On a signal from Maria, the troop resumed its march, back down the winding passage they had climbed earlier with heavy hearts, while the snow was blowing November over February and the thaw over the icy countryside.