The old man is no merely ancient mariner, but a sailor who has sailed away from time. How old can he be? Surely he has seen kingdoms rise and fail; has he also watched their ruins sink in sand and sea, till new kingdoms rise in turn?

He has, and it must be many times, for the question is not how old he is, but whether he is really a man. He is a magician, a true magician, and true magicians must be older than men dream, because true magic takes half eternity to learn. It is foolish and ignorant people who suppose that one approaches magic by opening the mind and accepting unlikely things. Nothing could be more mistaken, because true magic is only approached by the most caustic skepticism, scorning premise, despising conclusion. Only by exhaustive testing of minutest details, long past the point of human endurance, does one detect the infinitesimal signs of the deeper patterns. Only the labor of centuries can make them plain, and only after many centuries can one begin to apply their control. To extend life indefinitely might perhaps have been the summit of the magical art, if it did not have to be the very beginning. Even a journeyman mage must be frightfully old, to have advanced so far. The old man who has slowly drifted into the parlor of this fine little inn is a great master.

Why does he not hover in a cloud of light, or proceed attended by a guard of fallen angels? Who can tell? Perhaps the dark angels are there, only hidden from sight. Perhaps he would travel quite differently if he were entering his enemy’s stronghold; but he has come to this inn to see his granddaughter, so many times over great. After so long a span, is his line not extinct? If it is not, why are his descendants fewer than millions? Somehow the art he has followed must have strange rewards and constraints, as legends hint, and the innkeeper’s beautiful daughter is the old magician’s only living fleshly relation.

She has welcomed him without words. Fossil and flower are not more different, but see how he raises the tiny glass to his withered lips: the crooking of the fingers, the tilting of the hand, is the very mirror of her motion in setting the glass before him, only so much more slow. Seeing this now, one perceives the uncanny grace of his barely perceptible movements, so slow but so perfectly smooth, as the heavens wheel. Seeing that, then, one understands at last how the flight of her hands through the air can comfort a bruised heart, and bruise it again.

[That just came to me this evening, when I saw the weird old man glance at me in Miss Greta’s mirror. Suddenly it was all there, and I’ve been at it all morning, hammering it into words. I’d forgotten what that’s like. Damn. I used to write pages in a morning. I think there’s more. Dear gods let there be more. He really looks like every bit of it. He looks like a dressed up stick. But he does move like that; I watched and watched. It was like watching clouds change, so slow you don’t notice but once you do you can watch for hours. And Greta too — it really isn’t just her face and turning thirty, she’s like that but quick. That’s a brilliant aperçu this time, you inky gods, not a stupid little conceit.

So what on earth is he going to be up to now, if he’s a magician? Not just drifting in for a drop of that seabreeze elixir. What on earth must it cost? He must be truly rich, at least; the perfect model for a magician, of course. Why did I ever try to write a wizard as a busking rogue? No wonder that never worked. But what does a magician do, anyway? Well, magic, I suppose. He’s here for magic. But what will that be? What will it mean? Where is it going? I have to go back to Miss Greta’s again, two nights in a row just this once. She’ll let me sit once without drinking, I’m sure she will. I’m a regular after all even if I don’t spend so much. An inn needs its regulars. Even if he’s not there maybe I’ll remember something. Maybe I could even ask about him? Just ask around.]