Read Online The Life of Elves by Muriel Barbery, Alison Anderson - Free Book Online

expert at working with fictions. However, there are other places, too, and other fictions . . . I want you to tell me what you see and what you hear, the poems you read and the dreams you have.”
    â€œEven if I don’t know why?” she asked.
    â€œYou must trust music and poetry,” he replied.
    â€œWho wrote the poem?”
    â€œA member of our alliance.”
    After a long silence he said, “I can only tell you that it is addressed to you. But I did not think you would be able to read it so soon.”
    At that moment, she saw that Pietro was looking for the poem on the score, and from the way he was looking at them, she realized that he could not find it.
    Across from her, Gustavo Acciavatti was smiling.
    Â 
    Before long Petrus led her back to her room; the windows had been closed, because the rain continued its stubborn percussion.
    â€œThey’re not letting me do my work,” he said, as he was taking leave of her.
    â€œYour work?” she asked.
    â€œMy work,” said Petrus. “They are all so serious and cold. I am here because I am sentimental and talkative. It’s just that they have you playing all day long and in the evening they bore you to death with wars and alliances.”
    He gracefully scratched his scalp.
    â€œI like my drink and maybe I’m not so clever. But I at least know how to tell a story.”
    He went away and she fell asleep, or at least she thought she was asleep until, with a clarity that cared little for walls or closed blinds, she heard Pietro say, all the way on the far side of the patio, “The little one is right, it’s the devil.”
    And the Maestro’s voice, in reply, “But then who tricked the devil?”
    Then she fell into a deep sleep.
    Â 
    It was a strange night, of strange slumber. Her dreams were unusually vivid, turning to visions rather than nocturnal chimeras. She could let her gaze encompass a vista in the way one takes the measure of a panorama, and she found herself exploring the byways of a foreign land as if she were setting off along the passages of her familiar slopes. Although there were no mountains to be seen, there was a pervasive charm about the landscape, and she could feel the force of its prosperous terrain and enjoy the variety of its trees. While its gentle attraction was not like that of the lovely peaches, there was a sort of suppleness about it that was unknown in the mountains, and ultimately this conferred an equilibrium which Clara found exhilarating—a vigor without harshness, a rigor that, deep down, was favorable. Consequently within two months she had seen the entire spectrum of geographies—neatly tilled fields, velvety peaches of pleasure and, at the opposite extreme, her rugged and proud-standing mountains. What was more, while she was admiring the careful juxtaposition of the enclosures she became aware of a powerful, invisible enchantment that went well beyond the favor granted more opulent regions, and which transformed the landscape of thriving trees and shady paths into a scene of foliage and love. She also saw a village that was halfway up a hill, with a church and houses whose thick walls testified to the harshness of the winters. And yet you could tell that in the spring a fine season would begin, and last until the first frosts of autumn, and perhaps it was the absence of mountains, or the profusion of trees, but you knew that there would always come a time when you could rest from your chores. Finally, she perceived fleeting shadows, neither forms nor faces, that passed by indifferently while she would have liked to ask the name of the village, and what fruit grew in its orchards.
    Â 
    It was like an arrow. She didn’t know where it had come from nor where it went, but she had seen her flash by and disappear around the corner. However fleeting the apparition might have been, its every feature had been etched upon her with a painful precision that