Celia Bowen spends her childhood trailing her father, magician Hector Bowen (Prospero), from theater to theater across America and Europe. At first he shows her off as an accessory; as she grows, he leaves her alone for long stretches and shifts her training into constant private tests, demanding she use magic even for simple tasks and offering little explanation beyond hints of a competitive “game” involving another student.

In London, the man in the grey suit raises his unnamed pupil in near-total isolation inside a town house. The boy reads and copies symbols obsessively, takes rare escorted trips to museums and libraries, and receives exactly one hour of daily instruction. When he asks when he will be allowed to perform the kind of magic his instructor demonstrates, he is told only, “When you are ready.”

Back in Prospero’s world, an accident in a dressing room injures a dove, and Celia begs to fix it. Hector forces her to confront her limits: she cannot heal the living bird, and Hector kills it, telling her living things follow different rules. He breaks Celia’s porcelain doll instead, and she returns the next day having repaired it flawlessly; Hector frames the lesson as preparation to “win,” leaving Celia disgusted enough to discard the doll.

The man in the grey suit takes the boy to France for a week of silent observation that culminates in two theater visits. The boy watches an ordinary magician relying on devices and misdirection, then sees Prospero perform feats that use real magic while masquerading as stage trickery. Back in London, the boy explains the difference, and his instructor confirms he has long known Prospero, adding that audiences believe what they want—and what they are told.

Prospero escalates Celia’s training into cruelty, repeatedly cutting her fingertips until she can calmly heal herself on command. In London, the man in the grey suit introduces “binding” with a tarnished gold ring that dissolves into the boy’s finger, leaving a scar; he tells the boy the binding is permanent, ties him to an obligation and to a person he will not meet for a long time, and dismisses the details as a “technicality.” Far away, Celia hides backstage during Prospero’s applause and cries alone.