"She must be mad," Aldous could not help but voice, not to anyone in particular but with the volume that comes with utter disbelief.

He, like at least two dozen others, had come across the woman in the middle of the street and, instead of giving her a healthy berth, had actually stopped to see what all the fuss was about. The woman—elderly to be sure, and Welsh by the sound of her—had begun her rant against the oppression wielded by wizards in English, but had transitioned through at least six languages since, including Cantonese and, unless Aldous was very much mistaken, a langauge of one of the tribes native to the Americas, which he did not understand himself but had had one of his translators studying. She appeared altogether human; Aldous was uncertain if, by 'wizards', she meant magic folk (perhaps she was a squib?) or simply magic men.

Regardless of the content of her message, she was causing a scene in a way that made Aldous, the consummate Englishman, decidedly uncomfortable. Also she had taken to tossing what looked like knuts upon the ground, but when a child scurried to retrieve one, had given the poor thing such a glare of death that the boy had promptly thought better of it.

And yet, like a carriage accident, Aldous could not bring himself to look away.