Chapter Forty-Seven: The Gringo Journalist
Chapter Forty-Eight: The Wizard
Chapter Forty-Nine: An excerpt from a chapter of a novel written by the Wizard
Chapter Fifty: The Gringo Journalist
Chapter Fifty-One: Milan Garza
Chapter Fifty-Two: Quita Garza
Chapter Fifty-Three: The Gringo Journalist
Chapter Fifty-Four: The Gringo Journalist
Chapter Fifty-Five: The Gringo Journalist
Chapter Fifty-Seven: The Wizard
Chapter Fifty-Eight: The Wizard
Chapter Fifty-Nine: Dr Lucius Noir
Chapter Sixty: The Gringo Journalist
Chapter Sixty-One: The Gringo Journalist
Chapter Sixty-Two: The Gringo Journalist
Chapter Sixty-Three: Julio Pimental
Chapter Sixty-Four: The Wizard
Chapter Sixty-Five: The Wizard
Chapter Sixty-Seven: The Gringo Journalist
Chapter Sixty-Eight: The Wizard
Chapter Sixty-Nine: The Wizard
Chapter Seventy-One: The Gringo Journalist
Chapter Seventy-Two: The Gringo Journalist
Chapter Seventy-Three: The Gringo Journalist
Chapter Seventy-Four: The Gringo Journalist
Chapter Seventy-Five: The Gringo Journalist
Chapter Seventy-Six: The Gringo Journalist
Chapter Seventy-Seven: The Gringo Journalist
Chapter Seventy-Eight: The Wizard
‘… anything that can be imagined exists.’
—WHAT THE CROW SAID, ROBERT KROETSCH
‘The word chronological is not in the Courteguayan language, neither is sequence. Things happen. That is all there is to it. In most other places, time is like a long highway with you standing in the middle of a straightaway while the highway dissolves in the distance in both directions, past and future. In Courteguay, if you picture the same scene, time occasionally runs crossways so that something that will happen in the future might already be behind you, slowly receding, while something from the past may not yet have happened.’
—THE WIZARD
‘You appear to be a man in your late 60s,’ the Gringo Journalist says. ‘I have always been what I appear to be,’ replies the Wizard. ‘And,’ he adds, the words barely audible under his creaking breath, ‘I always tell people what they want to hear, whether it is truth or fiction.’
‘I am told that you move from place to place as if by magic,’ the Gringo Journalist continues.
‘There is no magic, there are no gods,’ says the Wizard.
‘You are currently referred to as a wizard, even by your enemies.’
‘It takes a wizard to know there are none,’ says the Wizard.
The Wizard lies in a high, white hospital bed. The room is banked with flowers, bouquets made up of various combinations of the eleven national flowers of Courteguay. The Wizard stares up at the Gringo Journalist, who is lean
