He leaned forward on the bench, folded the leather reins over in his hands to take up the slack and cast his eyes down at the hard dirt road skittering past underneath us. He looked up at the horizon as he spoke. "I have been around for over nineteen hundred years Evan, and in all that time I have never traveled faster than a good horse could gallop between my legs. I have gotten around that way all my life and can do it now. Right boy," he said, cracking the reins across the horse's back.

"Have you ever been in a plane or a car without sleeping?"

"No. What is the point of it? I am more comfortable with this. Last night was only the third time I had traveled in their machines, and I did it then only to meet the modern timetables to which the others now adhere. No, my friend, that way is not for me."

He pointed to the right in the distance where the road turned and paralleled the sea. "From here on in is my favorite stretch of road in the world. I think it a sin to pass it by any faster than necessary."

I smiled and took in the beautiful scene. "They told me you are the oldest of us. Is it true?" I asked.

"They say quite a bit do they not?"

"And not enough sometimes."

He looked over at me and smiled. "Yes, it is true. I am the oldest."

"How many members like me have you found in all this time?"

"That I have found personally?" he asked looking at me.

"Yes."

"Six. Chance, Kress, Ramsay, Jens, Tobias, and one other. I actively searched for many, many years, but that was a long time ago. In some ways, it was easier back then. One of the things I used to do was seek out any new spiritual leader. These were often men or women who spoke in strange tongues or possessed some new knowledge unknown to the other inhabitants of their city or village or tribe. In a few instances, these people turned out to be palingenesists who knew not what they were, save that they were different and took it as a sign of divinity. I found Chance, Tobias, and Jens that way. I think it much more difficult to find such individuals today. When enlightenment can be peddled in the marketplace alongside loaves of bread and cuts of meat, the voices of those truly divine become muffled. The world used to be a much simpler place, Evan."