‘What manner of place is this’, he asked eventually, ‘where nothing is what it seems?’
‘Everything is what it seems,’ replied his guide. ‘It’s only you who are not what you seem.’
‘What am I then that I am not what I seem?’
‘That is for you to say.’
‘I think I am what I seem.’
‘What are you then?’
‘An ordinary man in a strange place.’
‘Might you not be a strange man in an ordinary place?’
‘How can you call this place ordinary?’ he cried to his guide. ‘Everything keeps becoming something else. I thought I saw a horse back there, but when I neared it the horse turned into mist.’
‘You saw the horse in the mist. You did the seeing.’
‘But everything seems to whisper.’
‘You hear the whispers.’
‘The air is full of sounds.’
‘The air is always full of sounds.’
‘Even the silences have melodies.’
‘Silence is a sort of melody.’
‘And where is everyone? Is this an empty city, are there no inhabitants?’
‘The city sleeps. The inhabitants dream.’
‘So you mean that this is an ordinary city?’
‘As it should be.’
‘And there is nothing odd about it?’
‘Only the oddness that the few visitors bring, or that the inhabitants choose to feel.’
He was silent. It amazed him, for a moment, to think that he could hear his guide smiling.