Himerius looks up, his mouth full. “And if we were to find it?”

“Our master would be very pleased.”

Anna blinks. A book containing the entire world and the mysteries beyond? Such a book would be enormous. She’d never be able to carry it.

SEVEN

THE MILLER AND THE CLIFF

Cloud Cuckoo Land by Antonius Diogenes, Folio H

… the bandits prodded me right to the cliff’s edge and talked about what a worthless donkey I was. One argued they should drive me off the precipice to be split open on the rocks so the buzzards could pick my flesh, and a second suggested they put a sword in my side and a third, the worst of them, said, “Why not do both?” Put a sword in my side, then drive me off! I urinated all over my hooves as I looked over the edge at the terrible drop.

What a muddle I’d made for myself! I didn’t belong here, high on a crag, among rocks and thorns; I belonged high in the blue, sailing through the clouds, heading to the city where there is no baking sun nor icy wind, where the zephyrs nourish every flower and the hills are always clad in green and no one wants for anything. What a fool I was. What was this hunger that drove me to seek more than what I already had?

Just then a potbellied miller and his potbellied son rounded the bend on their way north. The miller said, “What plans have you for this worn-out donkey?” The bandits replied, “He is feeble and gutless and never stops complaining, so we are going to pitch him off this cliff, but first we are debating whether to stick a sword in his ribs.” The miller said, “My feet are smarting, and my son can hardly breathe, so we’ll give you two coppers for him and let’s see if he has a few more miles left in him.”

The bandits were happy to be rid of me for two coppers, and I was elated not to be thrown off the cliff. The miller climbed on my back and his son too, and though my spine ached, my head filled with visions of a pretty little miller’s cottage and a pretty little miller’s wife and a garden chockablock with roses…

KOREA

1951

Zeno