I met him in a tavern and we fell to talking. It was a night of the full moon—his time, he said. A magus, he claimed to be. I said, multiply these coins in my purse. He said, I could do that but I will not.
         Such greed, I mocked. To have the power to print all the money in the world, and not a penny for your fellow man.
         I deal in higher magics, says he. I grant your fondest wishes. You smile, but no sir, your fondest wish is not coin, nor a woman, nor even to see your father and mother alive again, now is it? Tell me sir, what is it you would wish to live to see? Perhaps to see the far-off land of the Chinese? Or to set your feet on the moon?
         There was a graveness in his voice and suddenly I knew I was inhabit in a moment of great importance. Momentarily I could not speak, but when I found my tongue again I said:
         I would live to see all of Ireland free again.
         He nodded, and then I was alone at the table.
         He seemed a convincing magus, but that meeting was over four hundred years ago, and the North is still in chains. In that time I have met many of his other clients. A contemporary of mine, of an astronomical bent, had indeed wished to see man walk on the moon, and he finally died in 1969. Another young lady wished for universal equality of the sexes, and although I think she will wait for centuries more, still, she says, she lives in hope. How could she not? It was guaranteed to her by the highest force imaginable.
         Yes, but I think sometimes the lunamagus plays his own games behind the scenes. Surely we could have had a united Ireland in 1919. Surely the man I know who wished an end to cancer could have seen that come about before his wife died of leukaemia. And as for the impulsive young girl who against my counsel wished to live to see a particular gentleman dead—well, as you know, that man has now maintained his high office for eighty unpleasant years, with no end in sight.
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