The whole magic of magic boils down to the interaction between the magic itself and the possibilities it can reach through different paths.

---- Genesis, Rowling's Book

"You've got the wrong coin, man. ”

A car drove under the dark bridge, blinding headlights keeping their eyes open. The car slowed down beside them, then stopped, and a window rolled down. "Is there nothing wrong here, gentlemen?"

"Everything is fine, thank you, officer. "We just come out in the morning for a walk. ”

"That's good. The police said. However, he didn't seem to believe that everything was okay here, and he was still waiting by the side. Ah Xiu put his hand on the shoulder of the madman Sweeney and pushed him forward, out of the edge of town, out of the sight of the police car. He heard the sound of the windows closing behind him, but the police car remained grounded.

Ashu walked slowly, and the madman Sweeney followed, stumbling occasionally.

The police car drove slowly past them, then turned around and headed back to the city, gradually speeding away in the snow.

"Alright, tell me what's bothering you. Ah Xiu asked.

"I did what he said, exactly what he said. But I gave the wrong coin. It shouldn't be that one, that one is sacred. You understand? I shouldn't even touch it. That one is the gold coin that should be given to the King of England, not something that bastards like you and me can touch casually. Now I'm in big trouble, hurry up and give me back the coins, man. You won't see me again, and if you see me again, I'm a fucking big asshole. I swear, from now on, I'll just stay in the damned woods, and never come out. ”

"You did what someone said, Sweeney?"

"Gatler. That's the guy you call Drinkward. Do you know who he is, who he really is?"

"Yes, I guess I do. ”

There was a panicked look in the Irishman's crazy blue eyes. "It's not a bad thing for me to do, it's not a bad thing for you to be able to handle it. He just told me to go to that bar at that time and get into a fight with you. He said he wanted to see how you were doing. ”

"Does he want you to do anything else?"

Sweeney began to tremble uncontrollably, twitching from time to time. At first, Ah Xiu thought he was feeling cold, and then he realized where he had seen such a shivering convulsion.

It's in prison, it's the shiver of a drug addict at the onset of drug addiction. Sweeney seemed to be under the control of something. Ah Xiu bet it must be heroin. A drug-addicted goblin?

The madman Sweeney ripped off the burning cigarette butt and threw it on the ground, putting the remaining unsmoked yellow shreds back in his pocket. He rubbed his dirty, blackened fingers, and then continued to rub them, trying to warm them up. There was a whining and whimpering in his voice. "Listen, give me back that damn gold coin, man. I'll give you another one, just as good as the original one. Hey, I'll give you a good handful of coins. ”

He took off his greasy baseball cap and reached out with his right hand to grab a huge gold coin in the air. He tossed the gold coin into his hat and grabbed another one from the mist of his breath. He kept conjuring gold coins from the silent morning air until the baseball cap overflowed so much that Sweeney had to hold it in both hands.

He handed Ah Xiu a baseball cap full of gold coins. "Here you go," he said, "take it all, man." As long as you give me back the one I gave you. Ah Xiu looked down at the hat, wondering how much wealth it contained.

"Where can I spend these gold coins, madman Sweeney?" Ashu asked, "how many places can I exchange gold coins for cash?"

For a moment, he thought the Irishman might give him a punch. But that moment passed, and the madman Sweeney just stood there, holding his gold-laden hat in both hands, like Oliver in "Orphans of the Fog". Then, tears welled up from his blue eyes and ran down his cheeks.

He picked up the hat and put it back on his emaciated head with nothing but greasy sweat stains inside. "You've got to give it back to me, man. He said, "Didn't I show you how to turn gold coins? I told you how to take gold coins out of the vault, and I told you where the vault is hidden." Just give me back the original coin, it's not mine. ”

"The gold coin is no longer with me. ”

The madman Sweeney's tears suddenly stopped, and unusual spots appeared on his cheeks. "You, you bastard," he said. Then, his voice suddenly disappeared, and his mouth opened and closed, but he couldn't make any sound.

"I'm telling the truth. "I'm sorry. If the gold is in my possession, I will definitely return it to you. But I gave it away. ”

Sweeney's dirty hands grabbed Asho's shoulders and stared at him with a pair of gray-blue eyes. Tears left dirty marks on the madman's face. "Damn it. He said. Ah Xiu could smell the mixture of tobacco, stale beer, and whiskey on his body. "You're telling the truth, you damn bastard. I gave it away, and I gave it away voluntarily. You damn black eyes, you gave it away fucking!"

"I'm sorry. Ah Xiu remembered the dull sound of the gold coin falling on Laura's coffin.

"Sorry or sorry, it's all the same. I'm dead, doomed. He wiped his nose and eyes with his sleeve, making his face even dirtier.

Ah Xiu patted the madman Sweeney on the upper arm a little awkwardly, trying to give him some manly comfort.

"I never thought it would happen. He said in a long voice, and then suddenly raised his head, "The guy you gave him the gold coin, will he return the gold coin?"

"It's a woman. I don't know where she is now. However, I don't think she'll return the coins. ”

The madman Sweeney sighed sadly. "When I was young and a silly boy," he said, "I met a woman under the stars. She asked me to pet her and told me about my future destiny. She said that I would be finished in the place of the sunset in the West, abandoned, forgotten, and that the gadgets on a dead woman would lead to my death. I laughed and poured more wine, toyed with her even harder, and kissed her pretty lips. What a beautiful day it was: the first gray-clad monks had not yet arrived on our land, and there was no war to tear the continent apart. And now. He stopped suddenly. He turned his head and stared at Ah Xiu. "You shouldn't trust him. He said to him in a reproachful tone.

"Who?"

"Drinkward. You must not trust him. ”

"I don't need to trust him. I just work for him. ”

"Do you remember how to do it?"

"What?" Ah Xiu felt as if he was talking to a dozen different people at the same time. The self-proclaimed goblin spoke in a rage, jumping from one personality to another, from topic to topic, as if the few remaining clusters of brain cells in his brain were burning fiercely and then extinguished forever.

"Gold, man! I taught you, remember?" he raised two fingers in front of him, looked at him with his eyes, and pulled a gold coin out of his mouth. He tossed the gold coin to Asho. When Ah Xiu reached out to catch it, he found that there was no gold coin in his hand at all.

"I was drunk," Ashu said, "I don't remember." ”

Sweeney staggered through the streets. The sky was already dawning, and the world around them had become gray and white. Ah Xiu followed him. Sweeney walked down a long downward slope, as if he was going to fall at any moment, but his leg always stopped in time for him to start the next faltering step. They walked to the bridge, and he turned around holding on to the stones on the bridge. "Do you have any money on you? I don't want much, just enough to buy a ticket and leave this place. Twenty bucks is fine. It's only twenty dollars, is there?"

"Where can you go for a twenty-pound ticket?" Ashu asked him.

"You can get me out of here," Sweeney said, "and I can get out of here before the storm comes." Away from this world where opium has become a popular belief, far away!" he paused, wiped his snot with the back of his hand, and wiped it off his sleeve.

Asho's hand reached into his jeans, pulled out a twenty-pound bill and handed it to Sweeney. "Here you go. ”

Sweeney grabbed it and slipped it into the breast-to-breast pocket of his oil-stained denim jacket. He nodded. "The money can help me get where I'm going. He said.

He leaned against the stone of the bridge, fumbling in his pocket, and finally found the cigarette butt he had discarded earlier. He carefully lit his cigarette, taking care not to burn his fingers or beard. "I'm going to tell you something," he said, as if he hadn't said anything that day. "You're on your way to the gallows--- there's another person, he's in another place, you share the same fate, it's just that he's different, he's.... Anyway, the rope has been put around your neck, and now you have a demon attached to each shoulder, waiting to devour your soul. The tree that serves as the gallows has deep roots, that tree stretches from heaven to hell, and our world is just the branch that hangs down the noose. He paused, "I'm going to rest here for a while." He said, curling up and crouching, leaning against the black masonry on his back.

"Good luck. Ashu said, not realizing that the other person mentioned by the madman was saying that he was starting to think it was Laura, but it was "him".

Ah Xiu was completely unaware of this strange connection, like horoscopes, divination, tarot, or anything else, he was unaware of the connection.

"Hey, I'm having a bad time. The madman Sweeney complained, "Thank you anyway." ”

Ah Xiu walked back to town. It's 8:00 a.m. and the city of Cairo has just woken up. He glanced back at the bridge and saw Sweeney's pale face, with tears and dirt on his face, as he watched him leave.

This was the last time Asshu saw the living madman Sweeney.

The winter days leading up to Christmas feel like a short day in between long winter nights. In this funeral parlor for the deceased, the day is fleeting.

The day was December 23, and the Nasus and Azir funeral home held a memorial service for Lila Goulas. Women crowded the kitchen, bringing with them all sorts of buckets, sauce plates, cooking pots, and plastic boxes for food. The deceased lay quietly in her coffin in the antechamber of the funeral room, surrounded by greenhouse flowers. There is also a table at the other end of the room stacked with coleslaw, beans, tacos, chicken, pork chops, and black peas. By the afternoon, the room was already packed, some crying, some laughing, some shaking hands and chatting with the priest. With the careful organization and close monitoring of Messrs. Nasus and Azir, everything is running smoothly. The funeral will take place early the next morning.

The phone rang in the hall. It's an old-fashioned black plastic phone with a rotating dial on the base. After listening to the call, Mr. Azir pulled Ashur aside. "It's the police," he said, "can you go and pick up the body?"

"Absolutely. ”

"Be careful. Here you go. He wrote down the address on a slip of paper and handed it to Ah Xiu. Ashu glanced at the address written in beautiful handwriting, folded the note and put it in his pocket. "There's a police car waiting for you. Azir added.

Ah Xiu came to the place where the hearse was parked at the back door. Mr. Nasus and Mr. Azir had separately stressed to him that hearses were supposed to be used only for funerals, and that they had a special wagon for picking up bodies.

The problem was that the truck was under repair and had been out of service for three weeks, so it had to use a hearse. You have to be more careful when driving that hearse, you know? The snow on the road has been cleared by a forklift, but he still likes to drive slowly like this. The hearse should go slowly, and it doesn't feel appropriate to drive fast. However, he couldn't remember the last time he saw a hearse drive down the street. Death is disappearing from the roads of England, Ashur thought to himself.

Now, deaths occur only in hospital wards and ambulances. Ah Xiu thought that death could not be used to make the hearts of the living tremble. Mr. Azir had told him that in some hospitals, they used stretchers that appeared to be empty to move the dead, and that the bodies were lying on shelves inside the cars covered with sheets. The deceased stole on the road like a masked guest.

A dark blue police car is parked next to a tree, and Ah Xiu parks the hearse behind the police car. There were two policemen in the police car, drinking coffee from the lid of a thermos kettle and keeping the car's engine running to keep them warm. Ah Xiu knocked on the window on the side of the police car.

"What's the matter?"

"I was sent by the funeral home. Ah Xiu said.

"We'll have to wait for the coroner to do the examination. The police said. Ah Xiu didn't know if he was the same policeman who spoke to him under the bridge that day. The policeman, a black man, got out of the car, left his colleague in the driver's seat, and led Ashu to the garbage dump.

The madman Sweeney sits in the snow next to the garbage heap. He had a dark green bottle on his lap, dirty ice and snow on his face and baseball cap, shoulders, and eyes closed.

"Frozen drunkard. The police said.

"Looks like so. Ah Xiu said.

"Don't touch anything," the policeman said, "and the coroner will be there at any time." From my point of view, I said this guy was drunk and unconscious, and then he just sat here and froze his ass. ”

"Yes," Ashu agreed, "it seems obviously. ”

He crouched down to look at the bottle on Sweeney's lap, a Jameson brand of Irish whiskey. This is Sweeney's ticket to leave this world, which was bought for twenty dollars. A small green Nissan car stopped, and a middle-aged man with a tired face, sand-colored hair, and a sand-colored beard got out of the car and walked over. He touched the corpse's neck. His job was to kick the corpse, and Ah Xiu remembered Mr. Azir's words, if the corpse didn't kick him back......

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