Conversation

‘Bo’orchu was a wise man. The most resourceful general in the tribe and one of Genghis’s top lieutenants, his ‘four swift steeds’, even now in the thirteenth century Bo’orchu was cultivating an intrinsic understanding of time.

‘“However, time is beyond our control,” continued Bo’orchu. “At present, we cannot swim upstream against the flow of time. All we can do is let the years go by.”

‘“Is that the will of heaven?”

‘“It is.”’

— Nozaki Mado, ‘The Fifth Horizon’, translated by Cat Anderson