The Old Man from Far Away (1)

The old man from far away was a mystery to the whole village.

He spoke our language, but in a strange form and manner, and though he clearly came from far away sometimes he would get irritable and claim he was born here, "This very spot is where I lived in my youth," he once said, though it was quite impossible, we know our own.

However, the village put up with his eccentricities. He was old and confused, but he had a great deal of knowledge and had taught us many useful things - great feats of the physic and medicine and a surprising skill at cookery, bringing together unexpected combinations of foods and herbs. 

And so he lived with us, in his own hut at the centre of the village, until one time it was agreed that he should move in with me and my family. The Wild Things had recently killed three of the village over as many nights and it was no longer safe for someone old and frail to live alone.

"Let the Wild Things take me," he said when I told him the village's decision, but though these were his words, he carried his things into our house all the same and accepted the bed we offered him. We had noticed this before, his false use of words. It was another reason he was clearly not one of us.

He spent much time with the children, teaching them great knowledge, he claimed, though it was mostly great nonsense my wife complained.  But the children loved him and hung on his every word. His stories thrilled them. They were ridiculous, but he made them seem so real. "I sailed to the stars in a great ship," he once claimed, pointing to a star in the sky. "Alpha Centauria," he called it, not the name we know it by. "Six light years away," he said, he was fond of nonsense phrases like this. 

"Why did you go there?" my youngest asked, a good question.

"To explore. To go where no man had been before. We identified a planet that might support life. I was to search for signs of life and bring back samples, so we would know more about it."

"Was there life there?" my son asked. A foolish question, you can't live on a star, whatever an old man says.

"No," the man shook his head sadly. "We're alone in the universe as far as I can tell."

"And did you bring back treasures?" my youngest asked, eagerly.

"Yes. Not a treasure as such, just a rock sample, but this rock is from another universe."

He took a rock from his pocket. We all studied it, the kids with awe on their faces, but it was just a rock.

I could hold my tongue no longer and laughed out loud. "You went all that way for a rock. And how did you get there?"

"In my ship," the old man said, sounding hurt. "I told you."

"You sailed to the stars in a ship? I had been to the sea in my youth and knew something of ships. "Ships sail in the sea," I told him, "They don't fly through the air."