The Life of Elves

by Muriel Barbery

  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.

  By the time they reached the center of the village, the winds had dropped and the storm, calmer now, rumbled dully between the last houses and the fallow fields. But the villagers stood rooted to the spot when they saw the army accompanying Maria, and initially they did not know whether to flee or rush to embrace their little girl; and while Chachard and the Saurat boys were gloating—they’d recovered quickly from the shock, and remained nonchalantly on their feet among the unicorns—it took the others a little longer before they could look at these strange shifting creatures without panicking. Finally, once they all had their wits about them, they racked their brains to try to decide what laws of hospitality might apply toward an otter with a human face, and they looked to the priest, praying he might suggest a few social graces to use with giant squirrels. As for André, he was watching as the snow grew thicker and, paradoxically, warmer and more transparent, and as was fitting, at that very moment Jeannot, the mayor, Lorette, Rose, and the grannies arrived, for they had taken the path from the church at the first signs of the storm abating, while the enemy horsemen had suddenly disintegrated in the snow. When they saw who had been sent as reinforcements for the church assembly, Rose and the old ladies crossed themselves, over and over. As for the lads, they felt more or less the way they had the day they got their first clobbering. But then the lookouts arrived with news that required urgent attention, and Léon Saurat, exhorting himself to act like a true veteran, came to report to André.

  “Behind the hill there is another troop,” he said, “even more of ’em, with combat rifles. Our men are on the front line but they can’t retreat because the waters have risen.”

  Astounded he’d managed to deliver such a clear speech, he smiled like a kid despite the gravit
y of the moment.

  Maria nodded. She closed her eyes and the snow fell more heavily. Then, by means of the same magic that had infused the lowlands in those glorious seasons, that had maintained the integrity of nature’s reign, the snow liquefied in an adamantine curtain and advanced toward the black wall. At the moment of impact they could feel a strange trembling throughout the countryside, a form of emotion that had little to do with any seismic order. A vibration of the same nature ran all through the detachment of elves, and the peasants all knew at once that they approved of what the little girl was doing.

  Finally they saw the storm subside in the same way that the horsemen of doom had collapsed into their own void: the storm literally swallowed itself up, and they were all aware that Maria’s strength was vastly superior. There was a moment suspended between the memory of fear and the relief of victory; they all looked at one another, not really knowing what they ought to think or do (in fact, they’d had no time for either thinking or doing); finally, they began to weep and laugh and hug, enthusiastically crossing themselves and rattling their rosaries. Alone among them all, André maintained the same vigilance as the strange creatures and, like them, he was looking only at Maria. Beneath the fine skin on her face, in concentric circles starting at her eyes, tiny dark veins were spreading, and her features were tense with an extraordinary concentration—eliciting a newfound reverence among the newcomers from the sky. André heard them murmuring in their incomprehensible tongue, in a manner denoting astonishment and admiration, and he saw that they had clustered in groups around her the way soldiers would gather around their commander. Then she turned to André and said, “Forward march.”

  But before the company set off, she called Father François over to her.

  Father François’s life had changed suddenly with the white curtain. When the snow had liquefied, the corolla he had felt while they were burying Eugénie returned. Three days earlier, he had known only that this corolla had something of the nature of love, spread over a territory more vast than the prisons of the soul. But in the magical twinkling of the snowflakes a universal spirit was revealed, and the significance of his own homily appeared to him at last in all its biblical clarity. Why had it fallen to the faithful servant of the cause of the separation of earth and sky to witness the revelation—with such unprecedented force—of the indivisibility of the world? That is what Maria had acknowledged in him, and that was why she wanted him to walk by her side along with André. In a horrendous epiphany, the enormity of the conflict to come penetrated every cell in the priest’s body. Loved ones would be lost; there would be unexpected betrayals; they would march against iniquitous tempests; they would shiver from inhuman cold and, adrift among the most diabolical iniquity ever whispered into a human ear, all faith would be lost, and they would know what it was to march through an icebound landscape, they would know the despair for which there was no remedy. But he had not traveled unawares over two millennia of inner revolutions to pledge allegiance to fear. A shiver went through him, then gave way to the hope of the little boy who used to play in the tall grasses by the stream, and he knew that that which had been separated would be united, that which had been divided would find harmony, for otherwise they would die and nothing would matter any more, nothing other than having wanted to honor the alliance of the living.

  Thus they set off on the path to the fallow fields, and they were within a stone’s throw from the hill where the gun battle was taking place. The women had stayed at the church but Father François was walking side by side with André and Maria in the vanguard of the lines, where no one was surprised anymore to be marching with unicorns and thrushes. No one was armed, but they were ready to fight with their bare hands, and they suspected above all that the allies would not be powerless when the time came to conclude the matter; and the sky of snow progressed with the company, and anyone who had any sense understood that it was thanks to that same sky that Maria was holding the enclave where the soldiers who had burst from the inverted land and sky could fight.

  They reached the hill, and saw that Gégène and his three companions were in an unfortunate position, unable to retreat—even though the waters had receded by then—and surrounded by the enemy who were firing cruelly at them. When the first shots had rung out, they had flung themselves below the curve of the hill, but the hail of bullets came very close and the enemy outflanked them. Now they were four against fifty. Even though they could see that a few of the villains had fallen to the side, they knew it was only thanks to a miracle that any of their own men were still alive—they caught sight of one of them on the ground, stirring feebly. In fact, they had had to show proof of heroic resistance in order not to be exterminated like woodlice and, seeing this, the reinforcements felt the surge of sacred wrath which the sight of unequal combat arouses: banking on the probability that their allies were burning with the same indignation and the same desire to redress the scales of justice, they were not surprised to see the bay horse lean over to Maria and say something to her. His gesture made his words crystal clear: Let us finish the job. To this she agreed.

  The snow vanished.

  It vanished all of a sudden, as if not a single flake had fallen during the battle. The earth was as clean and dry as in summer, and between clouds as white as doves the sky was daubed with blue of the sort to make you gasp with joy. They had not seen such a blue sky for so long, and advanced all the faster in the direction of the enemy, who now saw the extraordinary battalion at last. You might have thought that men who had shot their arrows into a supernatural storm could resist better than others the shock of that extraordinary vision, but instead they seemed to freeze on the spot, rigid with stupor and fear. One of them, however, managed somehow to drag himself from the general paralysis and he aimed his rifle at the line of advancing soldiers.

  The land was transformed. It was a strange transformation, in fact, because there was no change to either its appearance or its essence, but its elements were enhanced and appeared in all their raw essential energy, and everyone could perceive this, thanks to unfamiliar sensors that revealed to them a new dimension of their visible world. It was primitive and splendid. The allies, metamorphosed as terrestrial animals, caused vibrations to course through the earth and raise it up, then spread like a subterranean tremor, mowing down the mercenaries. The eagles, thrushes, seagulls and all those connected with the sky spun the air into a turbulent field locked on enemy targets. The otters, beavers, and other terrestrial and riverine animals transformed the air into water, and with it they fashioned spears, which the men had time to admire before they were hurled at the enemy, wounding them more gravely than any weapon made of metal or wood. But while the diabolical tempest had seemed to draw its furor from the warping of natural elements, it now seemed as if the strange army had slipped harmoniously into the rhythm of nature.

  “Don’t stroke a cat’s fur the wrong way,” murmured Father François.

  At his side, André heard him and a smile creased that face of his, hitherto so resolutely grave. But today he smiled like a young man at the priest’s drolleries, and the priest returned his smile, adding all the new jubilation he felt at being a man, and they laughed briefly under the blue sky of victory, because they had come from opposite directions but now were bound by friendship before the same brotherly hearth.

  The last enemy fell.

  The first battle was over.

  Gégène was wounded.

  They hurried over to that good soul, and saw he could not get to his feet. He’d been hit by a bullet, and a spot of blood was spreading into his shirt, which they’d pulled away from his jacket. But he was smiling, and when they were all around him, he said in a loud, intelligible voice, “They got me, those swine, but I did for a few of them, first.”

  Father François came over to examine him, then removed his scarf and pressed it to the wound.

  “Are you cold?” he asked.

  “Nay,”
said Gégène.

  “What sort of taste in your mouth?”

  “None, more’s the pity.”

  But he was paler than a ghost, and they could see how he suffered with each word. Julot reached into his overcoat for the flask of tracker’s brandy and held it to his lips. Gégène sipped, visibly content, then let out a long sigh.

  “I’m thinking the bullet slipped on one of my ribs,” he said. “Or else we’ll find out soon enough, because I’ll be dead before I see Lorette again.”

  Maria knelt down next to him and took his hand. But first, she addressed Clara. “I’ve learned,” she told her simply.

  Then she closed her eyes and concentrated on the fluids running through Eugène Marcelot’s palm. There was no hope, and she knew that he knew this, too.

  Father François knelt in turn by his side.

  “There won’t be any confession, my brother,” said Gégène.

  “I know,” said the priest.

  “At the hour of my death, I’m a heathen.”

  “That I know, too.”

  Then Gégène turned to Maria and said, “Can you do it, lass? Give me my words. I’ve never known them, but they’re all in here.”

  With a pained, exhausted gesture he pointed to his chest.

  She squeezed his hand gently. Then she asked Clara, “Can you give him his words?”

  “Who are you talking to, then?” asked Gégène.