Chapter 44 Ace of Hearts...I flipped the card over and saw it was the Ace of Hearts...

As we got into the car and were about to set off for the port of Birives, near Athens, Dad suddenly became restless and tense.I don't know if it's because he's going to Bill Reeves or because he's got an appointment with that modeling agent to call him this afternoon and maybe he'll tell us where we can find Mom. We parked the car in the center of this coastal town, and then walked to the international terminal by the port. "Seventeen years ago, our ship was moored here," Dad told me.Pointing to a Russian cargo ship in the port, he sighed: "A person's life is an endless cycle."

"When did you call that guy?" I asked. "After three o'clock." Dad glanced at his watch, and I checked mine too.It's only half past twelve. "Like a cauliflower crown, Destiny spreads out in all directions," I blurted out, reading lines from the gnomes of the Magic Island. Dad waved his arms in anger: "Hans Thomas, what are you talking about?" I could see that he was being mysterious because he was about to meet his mother. "I'm hungry." I quickly explained to my father. I'm not actually hungry, just looking for a reason why I mentioned cauliflower just now.As a result, our father and son came to the famous "Microlimano"

(Microlimano) boat supply station, find a restaurant for lunch. On the way, we saw a boat going to Santorini.Dad told me that in prehistoric times the island was much larger than it is today, but after a violent volcanic eruption most of it had sunk into the sea. For lunch we had Greek lamb pie.Dad kept silent all the time, and only said lightly that there were several fishermen under the restaurant mending their fishing nets.We did, however, look at the watch three or four times.We all watched furtively, trying not to be noticed by each other. Dad finally said it was time for him to call.It's two forty-five now.Before leaving, Dad ordered a big bowl of ice cream for me.Before the ice cream arrived, I quickly took out the magnifying glass and the bun book from my pocket.

This time, I hid the little book under the edge of the table, and read it secretly, without anyone finding out. I climbed the hill and ran as fast as I could toward Grandpa Frod's cabin.I felt the ground under my feet tremble and rumble, as if it would crack at any moment. When I ran to the door of the wooden house, I looked back to the village at the foot of the mountain, and saw a large group of dwarfs rushing out of the banquet hall and gathering in the street. One of the dwarves shouted at the top of his voice, "Kill him!" "Kill them both and another dwarf shouts after.

I pushed open the door of the cabin.It's empty inside—I know Grandpa Floyd will never come back again.My knees gave way, and I sat down on a bench, gasping for breath. After a while, I saw a glass jar on the table in front of me, and there was a small goldfish swimming in it.So I stood up.I also found a white bag in a corner of the room, which seemed to be sewn from the skin of a hexapod.I picked up the glass bowl, poured the goldfish and water into an empty bottle on the table by the window, and carefully put the bottle and the glass jar into the white bag.Then I took the empty wooden box off the doorjamb and stuffed it in the bag—the same wooden box Grandpa Floyd used to keep his deck of cards when he first arrived on the island.I was just about to pick up the glass hexapod when I heard the jingle of a bell outside the house.Before it was too late, the clown rushed through the door.

"We must flee to the sea at once!" he gasped. "Us?" I was confused. "Yes, you and me! Make your way, sailor." "why?" "The magic island was destroyed by internal strife." The clown read out the lines recited by a dwarf in the banquet game just now. I tightened the string at the mouth of the bag.The clown was busy opening the cupboard, looking for something. When he turned around I saw a shiny bottle in his hand.It was half a bottle of Rainbow Soda. "Take this, too," said the Joker. We ran out the front door and down, saw it, and were petrified.A whole company of dwarves was climbing up the hill, some on foot and some on hexapods.Leading the way are four sword-wielding Jacks.

"This way!" said the Clown. "Quick!" We ran behind the hut and followed a narrow path into a wood overlooking the village.By this time the first dwarves had climbed the hill. The clown skipped ahead of me like a goat.I thought to myself that this goat shouldn't be wearing a bell, because the incessant jingling all the way would expose our possessions and attract enemies. "The Baker's Son must find his way to the sea," screamed the Clown as he ran. I told him that when I first arrived on the island, I crossed a prairie and saw a group of huge bee peaks and six-legged monsters, and then met plum blossom two and plum blossom three working in the fields.

"Well, we should go in this direction." The clown stretched out his arm, pointing to a path on the left. We emerged from the woods and stood on a cliff overlooking the plain below.When I first arrived on the island, it was there that I met the first gnomes. The clown was about to climb down the cliff when he accidentally tripped over a pile of rocks and fell.The bell hanging on his clothes jingled immediately, causing echoes among the mountain walls.I thought he was hurt, but he jumped up, waving his arms and laughing.The clown had no scars at all. I walked step by step, like walking on thin ice, and slowly climbed down the cliff.When I reached the bottom of the mountain, I felt the ground tremble under my feet.

We cross the plain in the valley.In my memory, the plain I saw when I first came to the island seemed much wider than the present one.It wasn't long before we saw Bee Peak.Compared with the bees back home in Germany, the bees here are much larger in size, but they seem to be much smaller than what I saw at the time. "I think we should go that way." I stretched out my arm and pointed to the tall mountain in front of me. "Do we have to climb up?" The clown trembled all over. I shook my head: "I got out of a gap in the mountain wall." "Then let's find the gap now, sailor."

The clown stretched out his arm, pointing at the group of midgets charging towards us across the plain.In the lead are eight or nine six-legged monsters.They carried the dwarf knights, and they flew with six hooves, raising piles of dust. Then I heard another strange sound—it seemed like a thunderclap sounded in the distance, but it didn't seem to come from the hooves of a six-legged monster.At the same time, I also found that the plain seemed to be a little smaller than before. Seeing that the six-legged monster was about to catch up with us, fortunately, it was here. , I saw a gap in the mountain wall.

"Found it!" I yelled. I squeezed as hard as I could into the cave.Then the clown crawled in--though he was much smaller than I was, I had to grab his arms and drag him into the cave.I was sweating profusely, I was almost drenched all over, but the body of the clown was as cold as this mountain. We heard the hexapod galloping towards the cave.Sooner or later, a face appeared at the opening of the gap—it turned out to be the King of Spades.He was about to poke his head in to take a peek, but the mountain wall closed and the gap disappeared.I sat in the cave with the clown and watched the King of Spades pull his hand at the last second. "I feel like the island is shrinking." I whispered in a low voice. "Destroyed by internal strife," said the Joker. "We have to get out before the whole island sinks." We ran out of the cave, and it didn't take long to come to the valley on the other side of the mountain.Frogs and lizards are still jumping and crawling in the valley, but their bodies seem to be much smaller, not as big as rabbits. Me and the clown run down the valley.It felt like we were jumping a hundred meters with every step; anyway, we were running into yellow rose bushes in no time.Groups of butterflies are still flying around in the valley.But except for a few giant mutants, the body was much smaller than what I had seen before.I didn't hear the humming from their mouths either.This may be because of the jingle of the bell on the clown's body. It didn't take long for us to climb to the top of the mountain.I stood here watching the sunrise the morning after the shipwreck.It felt like the whole island was floating beneath our feet.On the other side of the mountain, I saw the lake where I swam with rainbow goldfish.It seemed much smaller than the lake I remembered.Now we finally see the sea.In the distance, waves of white flowers kept coming to the shore one after another. The clown started jumping and dancing, as happy as a child. "Is that the sea?" he asked excitedly. "Sailor, do you see the sea?" Before I could answer him, I felt the whole hill shake and thunder under our feet.We heard a creaking sound, as if someone were gnawing on a stone. "The mountain wants to eat itself!" cried the Joker. We rushed down the hill to the lake—a lake in which I swam, but which now seems as small as a pond.Schools of goldfish are still swimming in the lake, but it is more crowded than before.It looked as if a rainbow had fallen from the sky and was burning and boiling in this little pond. While the clown was looking around, I untied the white bag on my shoulder, carefully took out the glass tank, and used it to hold the goldfish.I was picking up the glass tank that was sitting by the lake when it suddenly toppled over.I didn't touch it at all and somehow it fell over by itself.Maybe it's the goldfish in the tank.I found that the glass cylinder was cracked and a gap appeared.At this moment, the clown turned around and urged me: "Sailor, we must run for our lives!" He helped me repack the goldfish into the glass tank.I tore off the shirt, wrapped it around the tank, and slung the bag over my shoulder, wrapping my hands around the tank. Suddenly, we heard a loud bang, and the whole island seemed to be falling apart.We sprinted for life among the palms, and soon came to the lagoon where I had landed two days before.I saw the boat I left behind at a glance.It lay quietly, unmoved, between two towering palm trees.Looking back, I saw that the island was but a small island in the midst of an ocean; and through a row of palms by the sea I could see the ocean on the other side of the island.The small lagoon was as calm as the first time I saw it, except that clusters of foamy sprays began to emerge from the water's edge.I realized that the whole island was sinking. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a yellow dress floating under a palm tree. That's Hong Xinyao's clothes.I put the bag and the goldfish bowl on the boat and walked over to her.Then the Clown was dancing round the boat, as happy as a child. "Heart?" I lowered my voice and asked in a low voice. She turned and looked at me with a soulful longing in her pupils.I was worried that if she couldn't hold it for a while, she would rush over and wrap her arms around my neck. "I finally found my way out of the maze!" she said. "I know now that I belong to another shore... Can you hear the waves lapping on the shore? It's so far away, so long ago..." "What are you talking about?" I was confused. "A little boy is missing me," she went on to herself. "I won't find him here...but maybe he will find me. You see how far I am from him now! I have drifted from ocean to ocean, climbed mountain to mountain, endured all kinds of The torment of emotions and thoughts, but someone reshuffled the cards..." "They're coming!" the clown screamed suddenly. Looking back, I saw a crowd of midgets running toward us through the palm grove.At the head are four hexapods; riding on them are four kings. "Catch 'em!" ordered the King of Spades. "Bring them back to the Clan!" Suddenly there was a loud noise deep in the island, and I was so scared that I almost fell over.As if by magic, the hexapods and dwarves disappeared in an instant, like dewdrops in the sun.I looked back at Hongxinyao and found that she had disappeared too.I ran to the palm tree she was leaning against and saw a playing card on the ground.I turned it over and saw that it was a red heart. Tears welled up in my eyes, and I felt inexplicable grief and indignation in my heart.I rushed to the palm grove where the hexapods and gnomes had just broken through, when suddenly a whirlwind blew up in my face and lifted a whole deck of cards into the air.I already have the heart in my hand, and now I have the other fifty-one cards.These cards are all dilapidated, and the suits on the cards are vaguely discernible.I pocketed all fifty-two cards. I looked down at the ground and saw four white beetles, each with six legs.I was about to reach out to grab them when they all slid under a rock and disappeared without a trace. There was another burst of bangs on the island; a big wave washed up from under my feet. Looking back, I saw the clown sitting on the boat with the oars, about to row the boat away from the island.I hurriedly waded in after him.With the water up to my waist, I struggled to climb onto the boat. "The baker's son decided to come with me after all," said the Joker. "Otherwise I'll have to get out of here alone." He handed me a paddle.We rowed as hard as we could while watching the small island sink into the sea.The water swirls and bubbles around the palm trees.When the last tree was lost in the waves, I saw a small bird rise from the top of the tree and fly high. As the island disappeared into the sea, we had to row as hard as we could without being overwhelmed by the back waves.By the time we rowed the boat to a safe place and stopped to rest, my hands were bleeding from rowing.The clown rowed hard too, but his hands were as clean and white as they were when I shook hands with him the day before yesterday in front of Frod's cabin. Before long, the sun sank below sea level.We drifted with the wind for ten nights and all day.Several times I made excuses to chat with the clown, but he always sat on the boat with a smile and didn't pay much attention to me. At dusk next day we were picked up by a galleon from Allendal.We told the people on board that we had been on the Maria, which had sunk a few days earlier, and that we might be the only survivors. The galleon is sailing to the port of Marseille, France.During the long voyage, Joker kept silent, seldom uttering a word, just like he did in the lifeboat.Everyone on board probably thought him a freak, but no one said anything. As soon as the boat arrived at the port of Marseilles, the clown left without saying goodbye.He slipped between the sheds and disappeared without a trace. At the end of that year, I came to the Swiss village of Dürf.What I've been through for a while is so outrageous that I'll have to spend the rest of my life thinking about its significance.The village of Dulph is the ideal retreat.Coincidentally, I came to the village of Dulf fifty-two years ago. I found that there was no master baker in the village, so I settled down and opened a small bakery.I was a baker's apprentice in my native Rubik before I went to sea to make a living.Since then, I have been living in the village of Dulf. I never told anyone what I went through; anyway, no one would believe me. Of course, sometimes even I doubt the Magic Island story, but I did have that white bag on my shoulder when I disembarked in the port of Marseilles.I have carefully preserved the bag and its contents over the years.