The walk to civilization from Henry Lake’s house was steeply downhill, quiet, just houses, and then a right turn at the cinema onto the main road. One-way traffic, a couple of streets of shops. Less than five minutes. Not much more than ten after that to walk all the way down to the sea. The boy was fast. He moved through town the way he’d scaled that house, fluid and quick as mercury, comfortable in his own skin, happy to take up space. Everyone seemed to know him. More than that. They all wanted to welcome him, or touch him, or give him something, this returning prince, this little town’s prodigal son. I’d never seen anything like it, not for real. It was more like a film set. Shopkeepers hovered in their own doorways and forced free things on him as he passed—apples, honey, bread, a bottle of wine. Fresh-caught fish. Flowers. Books. A newspaper. They competed for his attention, elbowing one another out of the way and calling after him to come and have free haircuts and tattoos, a free massage, anything he wanted from the gallery, the new collection, from their own backs. Anything at all. Children fell in behind him like ducklings, a real-life pied piper, and their parents beamed, hands clasped at their hearts, and blushed with pride. A virtual game, dreamlike, a fairy tale. As finely choreographed as a dance, seamless and elaborate, but a piece of theater all the same. It had to be. A piece of fiction. Not real. Even though I could see it unfolding right in front of me, it was somehow not real at all. A woman crossing the road held out her child for him to take, and the boy smiled and shook his head, politely declining while more children grabbed at his legs and other passersby stopped to offer him the contents of their wallets. A jeweler chased after him with a tray of watches, begging him to consider, and he took a moment to appreciate them, but he turned down those too. He walked without breaking his rhythm, weaving through the narrow lanes and around his grateful subjects as freely and elegantly as a royal breeze. He didn’t stop moving forward, didn’t once look back. After he’d passed, behind him, in the space between us, those spellbound extras woke up from their dream, instantly forgot the delirium of his passing presence. The virtual went back to actual, the bright lights turned down, the extraordinary color gone. The real world zipped itself back up in his wake like water after a boat. And I saw all of it.