Chapter 1
At the foot of the great Mount Sho, surrounded by peaks and hills, lies the Valley of Livi. The mountain river Yul washes it with countless streams and nourishes the land with the purest water; the mountains create a unique environment—the wild winter winds do not reach the valley, and in summer there is no scorching heat. Magnificent gardens stand in bloom and bear fruit all year round.
Everyone who has seen this place says that the Valley of Livi is truly a paradise garden.
Since the valley lies on the road to the ancient Monastery of Sho, travelers are not uncommon there, yet despite this the valley gladly welcomes everyone. Anyone can find lodging and food here, grown and served by loving hands, as well as peace and tranquility amid the idyllic nature.
But this is far from the valley’s main purpose—only the visible part. The Valley of Livi has long served as a refuge for lost souls…
It was a warm summer evening. The scents in the garden had reached their peak: flowers and leaves steamed by the daytime sun generously released their essential oils, not competing with one another but creating a unique perfume for each day.
“The acacia notes have grown brighter,” said a man as he walked along the garden path.
He stopped by an acacia tree and stroked its branch, as if running his hand through a girl’s hair.
“Ryun,” the man said gently. “Another week will pass, and you will completely outshine all the flowers in the valley.”
The branches swayed joyfully.
“I know,” the man smiled. “You are happy. Your happiness has a magnificent fragrance, Ryun…”
The man withdrew his hand, adjusted the basket on his shoulder, and walked on. But at that very moment he felt that Ryun had transformed behind his back: the broad shadow of the spreading acacia vanished without a trace, while the fragrance continued to spread for dozens of steps around. Only now the scent came from a naked fair-haired girl.
The man stopped but did not turn around.
“Take a tunic from my basket,” he suggested, pointing to his back.
The girl took a few light steps, slipped her white hand into the basket, and fished out one of several light white tunics that the man carried especially for such occasions.
After putting on the tunic, the girl took a couple more steps and caught up with the man, who smiled at her affectionately.
“What will you do today?” the girl asked.
Her gait was light and airy, as if she were walking on tiptoe and dancing. Though she was a tree, she was young and in bloom.
“Come with me,” the man replied in the same gentle voice, “and you’ll see for yourself.” Then he added at once, “My dear Ryun, I swear, if I were human, I would have lost consciousness being near you. Your fragrance is so strong!”
The girl laughed with pleasure.
The man was always gentle with her—caring, constantly praising her—and such love emanated from him that it seemed boundless. If Ryun released her fragrance for one month a year, then this gardener radiated his love permanently.
However, his smile and tenderness were easy to misinterpret.
Ryun cast a fleeting glance at him and summed up inwardly: “Yes, it’s insanely easy to fall in love with him…”
The gardener adjusted a loose lock of hair and walked on, surveying the valley, stroking and greeting some of the plants. For each of them he found a kind word.
That was the problem.
He loved absolutely everyone.
When Ryun first came to him, she was enchanted by him, like all the others. In her life she had never met people capable of loving so openly and completely, and therefore it made a shocking impression. He looked at her as if she were not a lost, wandering soul unable to leave the world and be reborn, but an angel—a pure light in which everything was lovely, though she herself did not realize it. She, a lost sinner, tangled in her own unresolved problems! How could she be beautiful? And yet that was all she could read in his eyes.
But quite soon, after her tree had already been planted, Jamia came up to her and casually said:
“You look at him with loving eyes. As we all do, really. He is our benefactor, and we adore him, but…”
The acacia’s leaves froze questioningly.
“Just notice that he doesn’t look at only you that way,” Jamia continued. “Then it will be easier not to harbor any illusions.”
Ryun did not quite understand: she hadn’t even had time to form any illusions—but perhaps precisely because Jamia’s words came in time. From that day on, the acacia began to watch more closely how the gardener spoke with others and how he looked at them, and she understood the apple tree’s words.
Therefore now Ryun did not take his attention too personally.
At last the gardener and the acacia-girl reached the vineyard. The man took the basket from his shoulder, adjusted his green tunic with slit sleeves that bared his forearms, braided his long black hair, and pulled high black gloves onto his hands. Then he knelt on one knee, placing a bamboo mat beneath him so as not to soil his trousers, and got to work.
Since he was digging a hole, Ryun immediately assumed he was going to plant something.
“Are you planting a new soul?” she asked with interest.
The man nodded.
“Please take the bottle from the basket.”
Ryun bent to the basket, took out a glass bottle, and, lifting it toward the sun, began to examine it. At the bottom sloshed an elixir shimmering with all the colors of the rainbow, and from it stretched a sprout with a pair of characteristic grape leaves. No matter how hard Ryun tried, she could not see the soul. No one but the gardener could see souls and speak with them.
“Did my soul really fit into such a little bottle?” she asked doubtfully.
She remembered poorly how she had come to Livi, but she retained some memories of life in the bottle, and she clearly remembered the moment when she was planted in the ground.
“Souls are often so torn apart that only scraps literally reach me. It’s cozy for them to recover in a confined space filled with elixir vapors. It’s like a child maturing in its mother’s womb—cramped, but safe and comfortable. And when the spirit grows strong enough, I place a plant seed with it so that the spirit gains a body, and then I plant the sprout in the earth. That moment can truly be considered birth.”
Then he turned his gaze to the bottle and, still smiling gently, said:
“Well then, are you ready, little Hugo?”
A small glowing curly-haired boy, whom Ryun could not see, nodded eagerly, as if he had been waiting impatiently for this moment. The gardener opened the stopper and, carefully turning the bottle over, freed the sprout into the light. The remaining elixir poured straight into the hole. At the moment the gardener brought the sprout into the light, the soul finally merged with the plant.
“Happy birthday, Hugo,” the man said softly and gently sprinkled earth over the roots. “I hope you like this body.”
“Did he choose the grapevine himself?” Ryun asked.
The girl remembered how the gardener had carried her bottle around the garden and explained what kind of body she could choose. She wanted to be noticeable, striking, so that she could be seen and sensed from afar, so she chose an acacia. Livi had specially gone to the city for acacia seeds, though he very rarely left the valley…
“Yes. He said he wants to be useful with tasty fruit and fragrant wine. We chose the variety together for a long time; I hope we didn’t make a mistake.”
The gardener exchanged a few more words with the newborn grapevine, removed his gloves, stroked Hugo with barely a touch, then gathered his things and moved on.
“Where to now?” Ryun asked casually, feigning boredom, as if she were not interested at all.
The man replied thoughtfully:
“First I’ll go to the pond… I need to check on Ayan. Then—”
He did not finish, as a little bird chirped above them in the branches of a tall cedar. The cedar waved its branches expressively and angrily, driving the gray bird away.
“Mimi!” the gardener called.
The bird noticed him and stopped its struggle with the cedar. It landed on his long fingers extended toward it and chirped again.
“Mimi, dear, you must have forgotten, but Mois’s nuts are not ripe yet. They will ripen only in autumn… Why is he angry? He is old, Mimi, he doesn’t like having to repeat the same thing to you every day, so he gets angry. That’s what he was trying to tell you… Yes, dear, you do have a poor memory. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that… No, Mimi, it doesn’t bother me at all. Fly to the cherry orchard—perhaps the cherries are ripe already… Tell me later too, in case I don’t get there today. Thank you, Mimi.”
He waved his hand, and the bird flew off completely satisfied.
Mois rustled his branches a bit longer, but Livi found words for him as well, as always, and in the end the old one stopped rustling and contentedly froze in the sunshine.
And at last Ryun and the gardener reached the pond.
Lotus leaves rocked gently on the surface of the water, and multicolored dragonflies fluttered above it.
Livi stepped onto the wooden pier, knelt, and, rolling up his sleeves, lowered his hands into the water.
“Ayan!” he called.
Instantly a fair-haired young man emerged from the water. His skin was exquisitely white and delicate, like lotus petals. He laid his cheek in the gardener’s palm and pressed against it for a while. Then he climbed onto the pier and put on a tunic like Ryun’s, who was lingering off to the side.
“I’ve been waiting for you since morning!” the young man exclaimed at once. “You were gone so long… I walked all over the garden but couldn’t find you.”
Ryun rolled her eyes expressively.
“You don’t give our gardener a moment’s peace. Ayan, don’t you realize you’re too clingy?”
“Not at all,” the young man waved her off and added, “And don’t call him a gardener. He’s a god! The god of the valley. The monks told me—I asked them about everything.”
“Clingy,” Ryun concluded again.
“I wanted to know everything about our god. What’s wrong with that? After all, he saved us, and thanks to him we can live, and he also takes care of us! I love him!”
Ryun couldn’t help rolling her eyes again. Of all the souls in the garden, Ayan had been the youngest until today and the most expressive. If most loved Livi silently, the lotus was ready to shout about it day and night. None of Jamia’s admonitions worked on him.
By that time Livi had shaken himself off and stood up.
“To love someone, it’s not necessary to know everything about them,” Ryun argued. “Otherwise it seems like you love not him, but the fact that he’s a god.”
“I love everything about him. And that he’s a god too,” Ayan waved her off again and clutched the gardener’s arm. “So where were you all day—tell me! I really want to know everything about you.”
Livi nodded.
“All right, all right. So… in the morning I went to the monastery—they brought me new seeds and sprouts from the city that I had ordered, and I also took the oil the monks made for the trees. Then I spent the whole day in the laboratory with Hugo—we were preparing for the planting. You know, Ayan, what an important day that is. And as soon as Ryun and I planted Hugo, we came straight to you. That’s all.”
The gardener reached out and stroked the young man’s wet hair.
“It will be dark soon—you’ll get cold, Ayan.”
“Then I’ll go to the house with you. Please,” the lotus pleaded. “I missed you all day. May I at least stay near you at night?”
“Terribly clingy!” Ryun snapped at him and proudly walked along the path to her planting place.
Livi followed her to see her off and led Ayan along with him, since he was still holding his hand. In the end they picked up Ryun’s abandoned tunic, wished her good night, then walked through the garden wishing all the other souls of the valley a good rest. They arrived home in pitch darkness.
It was unfamiliar for Ayan, and until Livi lit the candles he stumbled over every threshold and bumped into household items. He had often followed the gardener into the house before, but had never been here in complete darkness, whereas Livi could walk around the house with his eyes closed. They said he had lived in this house for three hundred years, and before that lived on the same spot in a smaller hut, of which not a single board remained. When Livi built the laboratory, he expanded the dwelling.
From the incense the air quickly filled with the scent of lavender; the smoke streamed in the dim light, and even Ayan was enchanted and fell silent for a while.
There was nothing in the god’s house except a low table, a screen, and a mat that served him as a bed, so both Livi and his guest sat on the floor.
“Would you like some tea?” the gardener asked kindly. “Mint tea improves sleep.”
Ayan nodded.
“And also,” Livi continued with a smile, “I have real honey sweets. The monks treated me today. I’m sure they must be very tasty. Here, try one, dear Ayan.”
He handed him the box of sweets and went to light the hearth and boil the tea.
Ayan immediately jumped up.
“Livi, let me do everything. You go rest. You work like the damned every day, and I just idle about. May I help you?”
Since Livi was a god, it was difficult for him to get tired, but seeing the lotus’s shining eyes, he did not say so or argue.
“If it will make you happy, then of course,” Livi replied and sat back at the table, while Ayan busied himself.
“And let me cook for you!” Ayan exclaimed. “I’m sure I can do it! I’d bake something.”
“Ayan, dear, but I have nothing to bake with. I don’t have flour. All I eat is fruit and vegetables from the garden, and they don’t need cooking. But if you feel like baking, you can help the monks in the monastery kitchen. They would be glad of a baker, and besides, you could treat travelers in the valley if anything is left over.”
The lotus frowned.
“I wanted to cook for you…”
“So cooking doesn’t interest you that much?”
Ayan shook his head.
“No, I just want to help you.”
“All right,” Livi agreed so warmly that Ayan immediately brightened.
The gardener took a bamboo flute from the basket and began to play for the garden’s inhabitants, who listened to his melodious tunes every evening.
Ayan had already drunk his tea and dozed off on the god’s bed, while Livi continued to play and play.
The music flowed through the valley, mingling with the coolness and floral scents, creating such enchantment that even the mountain river Yul grew quiet, and the cicadas chirred more and more softly.
And that evening the music reached distant mountain places, where one unhappy lost soul was wandering…
