Chapter 6 6. World's End (Shadow)

When the girl put the first ancient dream on the table, I couldn't recognize it as the so-called ancient dream for a moment.I stared intently for a long time, then raised my face and looked at the girl standing beside me.She didn't say a word, just looked down at Gu Meng on the table.I don't think this object quite fits the name "ancient dream".What I associate with the charm of the word "ancient dream" is an ancient book, or some other object whose shape is far blurred. "This is the ancient dream!" the girl said.His tone was indifferent and helpless, rather than explaining to me, it might as well be saying to himself to confirm something, "To be precise, the ancient dream is here."

I was puzzled, but still nodded. "Pick it up and have a look," she said. I gently held it in my hand and scanned it carefully with my eyes.But in any case, there is no trace of the ancient dream, there is no clue to catch, it is just a piece of animal skull.The animal was small, and the surface of the bone probably became very dry due to long-term exposure to sunlight, losing its inherent color.The long protruding jaw opened slightly, as if suddenly frozen when he was telling something.Two small eye sockets, although they have lost their eyeballs, are still staring at the expanding empty room.

The skull is unusually light, so it has lost all sense of existence as an object, and there is no residual warmth of life in it.All flesh and blood, memory, body temperature are gone.There is a rough pit in the middle of the forehead.I stuck my finger on the pit and observed it for a long time, thinking that it might be the remnant of the horn being pulled out. "Is it the skull of the town's unicorn?" I tried. She nodded and said quietly: "The ancient dream infiltrated here and was sealed." "Can we read ancient dreams from here?" "This is the job of a dream reader."

"How to deal with the read dream?" "It doesn't matter what to do, just read it out." "It's not easy to understand," I said. "I understand that reading ancient dreams from it, but so far it's inexplicable. If so, I think this work is meaningless. Generally speaking, there must be a purpose in all work— —For example, copying dreams on it and sorting them out in sequence.” The girl shook her head: "As for the meaning, I can't explain where the meaning is. I think as long as you keep reading, you will probably feel it naturally. But anyway, the meaning has little to do with your work itself."

I put the skull back on the table and looked at it again from a distance, surrounded by a deep silence reminiscent of nothingness.But this silence does not come from the outside, but may be gushing from the inside of the skull like smoke.In short, it is an incredible silence, almost as if the skull is tightly connected to the core of the earth.The skull remained silent and turned its disembodied gaze to a point in the void. The more I looked at it, the more strongly I felt that the skull was telling me something, and there was even a sad atmosphere around it.But I couldn't express this sadness accurately.I have lost the proper language.

"Just read it." He said.I took the skull on the table in my hand again, and measured the weight with the palm of my hand. "Anyway, I don't seem to have a choice." The girl smiled slightly, took the skull from my hand, carefully wiped off the dust on the surface with a double-layer rag to increase the brightness, and put it back on the table. "Okay, let me tell you how to read the ancient dream." She said, "Of course, I'm just putting on a show. I can't actually read it. What you can read is limited to you. Look carefully: first, the skull needs to be read." Facing yourself. Place the fingers of both hands lightly at the temples."

She put her fingers on the sides of her skull and looked at me emphatically. "Secondly, stare fixedly at the forehead of the skull. Don't force it when you stare, but gently and softly. But you can't move your eyes away, no matter how dazzling you are." "Dazzling?" "Well, yes, while staring at it, the skull starts to glow and heat up, and you can quietly touch the light with your fingertips. Then you can read the ancient dream." I repeat in my head the sequence the girl said.I can't imagine what kind of light she is talking about and how it feels, but the general sequence is already clear to me.While staring at her slender fingers on the skull for a long time, a strong feeling came to me-I had seen this skull somewhere before!The whiteness of the washed bones and the small pit on the forehead gave me a wonderful spiritual shock, just like when I saw the girl's face for the first time.As for whether this is an accurate memory fragment or an illusion brought about by the instantaneous distortion of time and space, I have no way of judging.

"What's wrong?" the girl asked. I shook my head: "It's nothing, think about something. I think I can remember the sequence you just said. The only thing left is the actual operation, right?" "Let's eat first." She said, "I won't have time to spare when I work." She brought a pot from the small kitchen inside and set it on the stove to warm up.In the pot is chowder.There are onions and potatoes.After a while, the pot heated up and made a pleasant sound.The girl puts the food on the plate.Serve with walnut-stuffed bread.We sat opposite each other, putting food into our mouths in silence. The food itself was very simple, and the seasonings were all new to me, but they were by no means bad. After eating, I felt warm all over my body.Hot tea followed, dark in color with herbal bitterness.

Dream reading is not as easy and comfortable as the girl said.The light is too weak and disordered like a maze, no matter how concentrated your fingertips are, you can't touch them smoothly.But I can still clearly feel the existence of the ancient dream at my fingertips, it is like a graphic sequence surging forward.But I can't grasp it as a definite image, I just feel that it exists. It was already past ten o'clock when I finished reading the two dreams.I returned the skull that released the ancient dream to the girl, took off my glasses, and slowly rubbed my already stagnant eyeballs with my fingers.

"Tired?" the girl asked. "A little bit." I replied, "the eyes are not used to it yet. When I look at it, my eyes absorb the light of the ancient dream, so that my head starts to hurt, although the pain is not very severe. Anyway, the eyes become blurred , there is no way to keep an eye on it.” "It's like this at first," she said. "At first, the eyes are not used to it, and it is difficult to read smoothly. But after a while, you will get used to it. Don't worry, just take it easy for a while." "I'm afraid it's better that way."

After putting Gu Meng back into the library, the girl began to prepare for get off work.She opened the furnace cover, took out the red-burning coals with a small shovel, put them into a bucket filled with fine sand and buried them. "You can't keep your fatigue in your heart," she said. "My mother always told me this. She said that the body may have nothing to do with fatigue, but the mind must be freed." "Completely correct." "But to be honest, I don't quite understand what the heart is, what it means exactly, and how to use it. Just remember the word." "The heart is not used," I said. "The heart is just there, like the wind. You just feel its rhythm." She covered the stove, put the enamel pot and cups inside to rinse, and after washing, put on a blue coarse cloth coat that looked like a sky that had been cut off and lost its original memory for a long time, and stood in front of the extinguished stove thoughtfully. a long time. "Did you come here from somewhere else?" the girl asked as if suddenly remembering. "yes." "What kind of place is there?" "I don't remember anything." I said, "I'm sorry, but I really don't remember anything. It's as if the memory of the ancient world also disappeared when I was deprived of my figure. Anyway, it's a far, far away place." "Do you know what a heart is?" "I think I understand." "My mother had a heart," she said, "but it disappeared when I was 7. It must be because my mother had a heart like you did." "disappear?" "Well, it's disappearing. But let's not talk about that. It's inauspicious to talk about disappearing here. Tell me about where you lived. You can remember a thing or two?" "There are only two things I can think of," I said. "One is that there is no fence there, and the other is that we all walk with our shadows behind us." Yes, we drag our shadows.But when I came here, I had to hand over my shadow to the gatekeeper for safekeeping. "You can't enter this town with a shadow," said the gatekeeper. "You can either leave the shadow, or enter the town, it's up to you." So I abandoned the shadow. The gatekeeper told me to stand in the open space by the gate.The sun at three o'clock in the afternoon printed my figure clearly on the ground. "Don't move!" As he said, the janitor took out a knife from his pocket, inserted the sharp tip into the gap between the shadow and the ground, swiped left and right for a while, and then moved the figure sharply. Cut from the ground. The shadow trembled a few times as if resisting, but because it had been separated from the ground, it finally lost its strength and sat limply on the stool.The shadow that left the body looked much more shabby than expected, looking exhausted. The gatekeeper withdrew the blade, and watched for a long time with me at the shadow figure that had left its body. "Well, the shadow after independence is weird, right?" he said, "The shadow thing is useless, it just adds weight." "Sorry, it seems that I have to be separated from you for a while." I leaned over to the shadow and said, "I didn't plan to do this at first, but I really have to, so you can bear it for a while and stay here alone, okay?" "How long does it mean temporarily?" Shadow asked. I said I don't know. "Are you going to regret it in the future?" Shadow said in a low voice, "I don't know the details, but it doesn't seem right to separate people and shadows. I think there is a problem here, and there is a problem with this place. People leave Shadows can't live, and shadows can't exist without people. And yet the two of us are fine with our two phases apart. There must be something wrong with that. Don't you think so?" "I also think it's really unnatural," I said, "but this place has been unnatural from the very beginning. In an unnatural place, there is no other way but to adapt to the unnatural." Shadow shook his head. "It's pure truth. I don't believe in truth. The air here is not suitable for me. It's different from the air in other places. It's not good for me or you. You shouldn't abandon me. We didn't cooperate very well before. Well, why are you throwing me away?" In the end, it was too late.The shadow has been stripped from me. "I'll get you back when you settle down in a few days." I said, "This is an expedient measure after all, and it won't last forever. The two of you will always be together day and night." Shadow sighed and looked up at me with weak, defocused eyes.The sun shone down on the two of us at three o'clock in the afternoon.I lost my shadow, and the shadow lost its body. "I'm afraid that's just your wishful thinking." Shadow said, "Things won't go your way. I always have a bad feeling. I'd better find a chance to escape from here and return to the original world together!" "I can't go back to the old place, and I don't know how to go back. You don't know the same, do you?" "That's it for now. But I'm trying to find my way back. I want to talk to you from time to time. When will you come see me?" I nodded, put my hands on Shadow's back, and walked towards the gatekeeper.All the time I've been talking with Shadow, the janitor has been picking up stones from the square and throwing them out of the way. As soon as I was beside me, the porter wiped the white dirt off his hands with the skirt of his shirt and placed a large hand on my back.I can't tell if it's an expression of intimacy or an attempt to let me know the strength of his hand. "I will take care of your shadow," said the janitor. "Three meals a day are guaranteed, and you are allowed to go out for a walk once a day. So you just need to rest assured, there is no need to worry." "Can we see each other often?" "Well," said the porter, "it is impossible to be free all the time. But it is not impossible to meet, if the time comes and circumstances permit, and I am interested." "If I want to ask you to return the shadow, what will happen?" "It seems that you still don't quite understand the system here." The gatekeeper still put his hand on my back, "In this place, no one is allowed to have a shadow, and once you enter, you can't go out again. That is to say, what you just asked Words mean nothing." In this way, I lost my shadow. Walking out of the library, I offered to take the girl home. "Don't send me off," she said, "I'm not afraid of the dark night, and besides, it's the opposite direction from where you live." "I really want to give it away." I said, "I seem to be very excited, and I can't fall asleep right away when I go back." The two of us walked south across the old bridge side by side, the willow branches on the sandbar in the river were swayed by the still chilly spring breeze, and the moonlight pouring straight down coated the cobblestone road under our feet with a layer of shining silver.The air is moist and heavy, lingering on the ground.The girl tucked her once loose hair back into a bunch.After coiling it forward, it was stuffed into the windbreaker. "Your hair is very beautiful," I said. "thanks." "Has anyone praised your hair in the past?" "No, you are the first." "How does it feel to be praised?" "I don't know." He said.She looks into my face.Putting your hands in your windbreaker pockets, "I know you're boasting about my hair. But it's not quite that. My hair makes up something else in your mind—you're not talking about that, are you?" "No, I'm talking about your hair." The girl smiled faintly, as if looking for something in the air. "Don't be surprised, I'm just not used to your way of speaking." "It's okay, you'll get used to it soon." I said. The girl's home is in the worker's residential area.This area is located in a corner of the factory area, quite desolate.In fact, the factory itself is also a bleak scene.In the past, the Grand Canal was full of green water, and freighters and yachts shuttled back and forth, but now the water gate is closed, and the river section with bottomless water can be seen everywhere.The hard white clods swelled out like the dead corpses of huge ancient creatures covered with flecks.The wide stone steps on the river bank for loading and unloading goods are no longer useful, only lush weeds are intertwined along the stone cracks.Old bottles and rusted machine parts poked out of the mud, while flat-deck wooden boats decayed aside. On the banks of the canal, deserted and abandoned factories continue one after another.The doors were closed, the window panes were gone, the walls were covered with ivy, and the banisters of the safety stairs were rusted and overgrown with weeds. Passing through the factories lined up along the river is the staff residence.All of them are five-story old houses.The girl told me that it was originally an elegant apartment for rich people, but with the changes of the times, it has been divided into sections for poor workers to live in.But these workers are no longer workers today.Almost all the factories on which they depended for employment have closed their doors.A suit of technology is also useless.At most, a little odd job as the town demanded.The girl's father was also one of the workers. After crossing the last stone bridge with low handrails in the canal, you will see the area where the girl's house is located.The buildings are connected by long corridors, reminiscent of the ladders used for siege in the Middle Ages. It was almost midnight, and almost all the windows were out of lights.She took my hand, as if avoiding the sight of the giant man-eating bird above her head, and walked quickly through the maze-like corridors.Then he stood in front of a building and said goodbye to me. "Good night." After speaking, I walked up the west hillside alone and returned to my residence.