We follow along behind him through a twisty path of such assemblages—complicated, studded walls, open to the sky—steadying ourselves by putting our hands out to the narrowing, encrusted sides of the trail. We descend a few stairs, the path opens out, and we’re in a broad sandy circle before the mouth of a cave. “This,” the old man says (you can tell by his voice he’s an old man, and his backlit profile when his veil falls between you and the sun), “is the fairies’ treasury, where things are hidden for children. Scratch your feet in the sand and see what you can find.”

The kids start shuffling, and sure enough, the sand is full of pennies. They shuffle harder and faster, pick up the coins, and the teacher urges them to slow down. “Can we keep them?” they ask. They aren’t accustomed to being given money. The teacher looks to the Gnome, who nods gravely.

Soon we are moving forward again, this time up a curving stair along the side of a pathway of rock—hard to tell what’s stone and what’s painted cement, everything manipulated and assembled here, everything mosaicked and wrought, and little windows keep opening up in the stones along the way, in which lit bulbs shine on scenes of fairyland: dwarves mining their treasure, girl sprites bent under the weight of their chipped wings. Here Snow White, in a china figurine which must date to the day when that movie was new, bending forward, wide-eyed, breathless, her hands on her dirndl in front of her, as if she’s confronting the newest and strangest thing in the world.

The path crests, begins to descend again. “Quiet now,” says the Mountain Gnome, “for we are entering the Enchanted Garden, high, high up in the Valley of the Moon.” I can’t think how the old man’s built the Enchanted Garden—for everything here is his handiwork, and it all has the same eccentric look, a signature style which says he’s done it all alone, worked for years to build this fairy grotto. The Garden is a rounded opening, quite deep, in the center of a sort of hill built of cement and who-knows-what; its shady, rather dank interior is lined by seats the Gnome’s carved out along the circular wall. In the center is a little pool, mossy and opaque, home to a fat and somnolent goldfish. In a wire cage sits a lustrous black mynah bird, sleek and imperious, who opens his beak now and then to squawk, or cry Hel-lo.