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Description
    The woman walked briskly down the crowded Edinburgh street, the sharp taps of her feet contributing slightly to the roar of the city. Along with the shouts of the cursed tourists, the distant drone of bagpipes and the rumbling of cars and buses there was the insignificant rhythmic clicking noise from the newly polished black shoes that she wore. Tap . . . Tap . . . Tap . . . and then an unexpected double tap-click as her next step tipped between two paving slabs.
    Anna stumbled slightly, cursing. The weight of the briefcase she carried nearly caused her to lose her balance, but she righted herself and continued.
As she straightened, she heard a strangled gasp from behind her, and turned her head to look. But there was no one there, at least no one who seemed at all interested in her. She thought that she saw a flurry of motion from the corner of her eye, a bright light like the sun striking something metallic, but when she examined the street more closely, she saw nothing.
    Anna shook her head, causing her short auburn hair to flutter heavily around her face. She meticulously smoothed some wrinkles from her tweed jacket, and then walked on again, berating herself for her foolishness. She should not be so startled at every little thing. There was no use seeing fairies in the shadows. The roads of Edinburgh were not that different from those of Augusta, where she had spent most of her adult life. Merely because she had returned to the city of her childhood did not mean that she could start acting like a child again.
    She knew that it was difficult. For the longest time she had regarded Scotland as something out of a fantasy book, the kind that she no longer read. It was outside of her reality, and thus safe to populate with the same creatures that resided in the pages of other such worlds. Now that she was having to think of the place as real, a corner of her mind was rebelliously expecting to run into a leprechaun.
    She clicked her tongue in agitation. Such childish fancies. Edinburgh was a place just like any other. No dragons, no fairies, no leprechauns.
Anna discovered that her fingers had automatically reached for the fine chain that hung around her neck, pulling the pendant on it from where it usually rested safe inside her shirt. It wasn’t at all practical, or even elegant, but she was attached to one of the last relics of her childhood. She had often considered getting rid of it, but it had been hers for so long that it seemed rather a waste.
    Her slim fingers folded into their habitual position around the pendant. She remembered, as she always did when she took hold of it after letting it lie dormant for a while, about when she had found it.
    She had been only about eight, shooed outside by her mother and left to play on the hill that flanked her house. It was a little thing, crisscrossed with odd trails, any of which let her reach the top in only fifteen minutes . . .

    She had been of the prime age for adventuring. Fleeing the wrath of an enraged harpy, she reached the nearby mountain. It already had passes up and down it, but they were sure to be watched by hostile parties, so she had to blaze new trails through the heather in her stolid efforts to reach the peak. It was an epic journey, sure to take any other intrepid adventurer weeks to achieve, but for Anna it took up merely a day.
    She would be safe at the top. It was a fairy meeting place, where no harpy or ogre ever dared to go. The fairies would help her. Perhaps they would set her a quest where she would go and meet dragons with crimson scales and cunning in their eyes, or maybe elvish children with white skin and golden eyes and long pointed ears.
    But when at last she reached the top, bearing grievous wounds from her difficulty on the journey, she met only one fairy. It was large and pink. Less qualified eyes would have taken it for a butterfly, but Anna knew better. It started at her approach, and she ran after it as fast as she could.
    It led her down to a part of the mountain that she had never before explored. It looked as though a phoenix had been there recently, for there was a perfect circle of scorched earth, bordered on all sides by the purple flowers of the heather. At the very center was a tiny puddle. The water glinted oddly: obviously magical.
    The fairy landed momentarily in the midst of the circle of ashes, then flew straight up until she couldn’t see it.
    So this was the place she had been led to. Doubtless there was something for her to do. Some magical world that needed saving. Anna peered closer at the puddle, and saw that the glimmering did not just come from the water. There was something underneath it.
    She reached out and plucked it up. When she pulled back her fingers, they were not wet or ash-blackened. She did not notice. She was too engrossed in examining the crystal ball that she had found . . .

    The woman in the Edinburgh street smiled wanly. Odd that whenever she thought of the story, she gave the version that she had always told her younger cousins when they asked about her magic necklace. She glanced at the thing in her hand. Crystal ball indeed! It had fascinated her as a child, but now she could see it for what it really was.
    It was odd that she remembered it as translucent and sparkling. She recalled sitting in school holding the marble, peering through the smoky white haze into a magic world that only she could see, peopled with children and fantasy creatures.
    Seeing it now, she couldn’t think of what had engrossed her so. It wasn’t an unpleasant thing really, but it held no fascination. It was white—opaque white, without any depth to it—and all sunshine did to it was illuminate the dull surface.
    Anna glanced at her marble, then with a twirl of her fingers she let it go. It fell back on its slender chain, hanging lightly in its accustomed place in the center of her chest. It swayed from side to side as she walked. It was the only thing about her that did. Her footsteps were sharp and crisp, almost jerky, as were her arm movements. Even the swishing of her black skirt contrived to be angular. Only the marble on its chain essayed a lazy curve.
   She bumped into another pedestrian, and immediately broke into extensive—and entirely insincere—automatic apologies. The man she had hit waved her off. He was standing next to a large sign advertising Ghost Tours, and his coat proclaimed him to be one of the guides.
    Seeing that he had Anna’s attention, he broke out into a pre-programmed sales pitch. She stood stiffly for a few moments, and then, just as stiffly, said, “There’s no such thing as ghosts.”
    This time she heard a distinct gasp from behind her. She turned warily. A girl was staring at her with a strange expression. It was terror, shock, and disbelief all at once, as if she had been betrayed. The sun glinted in her eyes and made them look golden, but she turned her head and faded back into the crowd when she saw Anna watching her.
    Anna blinked, and turned around again. She looked up at the sky: gray, as usual. People were pushing rudely past her as she stood motionless, so she started walking again.
    Her marble bumped against her chest. She touched it lightly to steady it. It wasn’t exactly round; there were smoother spaces where her fingers fitted. She wasn’t sure if they had been there all along, or if she had worn them herself in all the years she had owned the marble.
    Handling a marble couldn’t change it from translucent to opaque, could it? No, of course not. The marble had been opaque all along, but she had pretended that she could see worlds in it because that made it more interesting. Of course.
    She had tried looking in childhood pictures to reassure herself, but in every one of them the camera’s flash had caught the marble and made it look like she had a flashlight around her neck. It was surprising that something so dull could shine so brightly. But handling could take off shine, couldn’t it? Varnish? Surely that’s what had happened. It might take a long time, but Anna had held the marble practically every waking moment until she got up to high school. And it was only in college that she had started wearing it under other things. It was at about that point that the varnish must have been worn off all the way. She’d stopped looking into it for imaginary things. She’d stopped imagining the world within it, populated almost entirely by things that didn’t really exi—
    Someone tapped her on the shoulder. Anna looked back. It was the girl who had been staring at her. Close up, she looked very strange. Her skin was unnaturally pale, and her hair was even lighter than the Scandinavian white-blonde that Anna sometimes saw. The girl’s eyes were fixed on the street.
    “M’lady,” she said hesitantly, with a voice that shook, “Are you the keeper of the Orb of Fantasy?” Her accent was indisputably English, but it had an edge that Anna had not heard before.
    Anna looked at her skeptically. “The what?”
    “The Orb of Fantasy.” The girl’s voice sounded shocked. “It populates our world with what you imagine to be there.”
    “No, I don’t have it,” said Anna, and went to walk away. It sounded like something from a video game, or one of the books she no longer read. But the girl reached desperately for her arm, crying out, “But you do! I see it! Why have you neglected us so? Why have you shirked your duty?”
    Anna backed away. “I haven’t got any duty to you. I don’t even know you. Now go away and leave me alone.” She had forgotten how crazy some of the people were who roamed these streets.
    The girl shook her head in amazement. She pointed at Anna’s marble. “Why do you not imagine for us? You used to do it so wonderfully!”
    Anna grasped the marble between the thumb and forefinger of her right hand. “Is this one of those annoy-the-tourists-until-they-pay-you ploys? Because I’m not giving you any money.”
    “I don’t want money!” The girl shrieked. “I want belief!” She looked up at Anna pleadingly. Her eyes were bright gold. Anna drew in her breath. Her eyes flew to the girl’s ears, which her hair only partly covered. They were long and pointed.
    Anna stared. The girl was the embodiment of the elf children that she had imagined when she was young.
    But then she shook her head. For years, ever since the marble dimmed, Anna had forced herself to abandon such childhood fantasies as elves. “You’re an actor, aren’t you?” she asked with an effort. “Nice costume. It nearly fooled me. But of course there’s no such thing as elves.”
    The girl’s golden eyes opened wider. “But there are!” she protested.
    Anna shook her head. She was surer of herself now, raising her voice to drown out her tiny lingering doubt. “No. How gullible do you think I am? There are no elves, no dragons, no fairies—”
    “No! No, don’t say that!” There were tears glimmering in the girl’s frantic eyes. “The magic—”
    Anna was losing her patience. “There is no such thing as magic!” she screamed, looking straight at the girl’s golden eyes.
    As she shouted, she heard a crack. The marble in her hand had split. Startled, she dropped the fragments to the street. They tumbled slowly, the light making them look black. And hollow, like an empty eggshell.
    Anna paused a moment. But then she turned and walked briskly away. She didn’t need that silly marble. Credulous of her to put so much faith and belief into it. She was better off without it. But how that child had carried on!
    The woman walked off down the street. Behind her, the golden-eyed girl knelt, sobbing uncontrollably. She was hopelessly trying to gather the marble’s blackened fragments, as if it was her world that Anna had shattered and not some worthless child’s ornament.
    And then she herself faded, leaving behind only a few tearstains on the cobblestones and an insignificant mound of blackened, crumbled glass.

Description
    The woman walked briskly down the crowded Edinburgh street, the sharp taps of her feet contributing slightly to the roar of the city. Along with the shouts of the cursed tourists, the distant drone of bagpipes and the rumbling of cars and buses there was the insignificant rhythmic clicking noise from the newly polished black shoes that she wore. Tap . . . Tap . . . Tap . . . and then an unexpected double tap-click as her next step tipped between two paving slabs.
    Anna stumbled slightly, cursing. The weight of the briefcase she carried nearly caused her to lose her balance, but she righted herself and continued.
As she straightened, she heard a strangled gasp from behind her, and turned her head to look. But there was no one there, at least no one who seemed at all interested in her. She thought that she saw a flurry of motion from the corner of her eye, a bright light like the sun striking something metallic, but when she examined the street more closely, she saw nothing.
    Anna shook her head, causing her short auburn hair to flutter heavily around her face. She meticulously smoothed some wrinkles from her tweed jacket, and then walked on again, berating herself for her foolishness. She should not be so startled at every little thing. There was no use seeing fairies in the shadows. The roads of Edinburgh were not that different from those of Augusta, where she had spent most of her adult life. Merely because she had returned to the city of her childhood did not mean that she could start acting like a child again.
    She knew that it was difficult. For the longest time she had regarded Scotland as something out of a fantasy book, the kind that she no longer read. It was outside of her reality, and thus safe to populate with the same creatures that resided in the pages of other such worlds. Now that she was having to think of the place as real, a corner of her mind was rebelliously expecting to run into a leprechaun.
    She clicked her tongue in agitation. Such childish fancies. Edinburgh was a place just like any other. No dragons, no fairies, no leprechauns.
Anna discovered that her fingers had automatically reached for the fine chain that hung around her neck, pulling the pendant on it from where it usually rested safe inside her shirt. It wasn’t at all practical, or even elegant, but she was attached to one of the last relics of her childhood. She had often considered getting rid of it, but it had been hers for so long that it seemed rather a waste.
    Her slim fingers folded into their habitual position around the pendant. She remembered, as she always did when she took hold of it after letting it lie dormant for a while, about when she had found it.
    She had been only about eight, shooed outside by her mother and left to play on the hill that flanked her house. It was a little thing, crisscrossed with odd trails, any of which let her reach the top in only fifteen minutes . . .

    She had been of the prime age for adventuring. Fleeing the wrath of an enraged harpy, she reached the nearby mountain. It already had passes up and down it, but they were sure to be watched by hostile parties, so she had to blaze new trails through the heather in her stolid efforts to reach the peak. It was an epic journey, sure to take any other intrepid adventurer weeks to achieve, but for Anna it took up merely a day.
    She would be safe at the top. It was a fairy meeting place, where no harpy or ogre ever dared to go. The fairies would help her. Perhaps they would set her a quest where she would go and meet dragons with crimson scales and cunning in their eyes, or maybe elvish children with white skin and golden eyes and long pointed ears.
    But when at last she reached the top, bearing grievous wounds from her difficulty on the journey, she met only one fairy. It was large and pink. Less qualified eyes would have taken it for a butterfly, but Anna knew better. It started at her approach, and she ran after it as fast as she could.
    It led her down to a part of the mountain that she had never before explored. It looked as though a phoenix had been there recently, for there was a perfect circle of scorched earth, bordered on all sides by the purple flowers of the heather. At the very center was a tiny puddle. The water glinted oddly: obviously magical.
    The fairy landed momentarily in the midst of the circle of ashes, then flew straight up until she couldn’t see it.
    So this was the place she had been led to. Doubtless there was something for her to do. Some magical world that needed saving. Anna peered closer at the puddle, and saw that the glimmering did not just come from the water. There was something underneath it.
    She reached out and plucked it up. When she pulled back her fingers, they were not wet or ash-blackened. She did not notice. She was too engrossed in examining the crystal ball that she had found . . .

    The woman in the Edinburgh street smiled wanly. Odd that whenever she thought of the story, she gave the version that she had always told her younger cousins when they asked about her magic necklace. She glanced at the thing in her hand. Crystal ball indeed! It had fascinated her as a child, but now she could see it for what it really was.
    It was odd that she remembered it as translucent and sparkling. She recalled sitting in school holding the marble, peering through the smoky white haze into a magic world that only she could see, peopled with children and fantasy creatures.
    Seeing it now, she couldn’t think of what had engrossed her so. It wasn’t an unpleasant thing really, but it held no fascination. It was white—opaque white, without any depth to it—and all sunshine did to it was illuminate the dull surface.
    Anna glanced at her marble, then with a twirl of her fingers she let it go. It fell back on its slender chain, hanging lightly in its accustomed place in the center of her chest. It swayed from side to side as she walked. It was the only thing about her that did. Her footsteps were sharp and crisp, almost jerky, as were her arm movements. Even the swishing of her black skirt contrived to be angular. Only the marble on its chain essayed a lazy curve.
   She bumped into another pedestrian, and immediately broke into extensive—and entirely insincere—automatic apologies. The man she had hit waved her off. He was standing next to a large sign advertising Ghost Tours, and his coat proclaimed him to be one of the guides.
    Seeing that he had Anna’s attention, he broke out into a pre-programmed sales pitch. She stood stiffly for a few moments, and then, just as stiffly, said, “There’s no such thing as ghosts.”
    This time she heard a distinct gasp from behind her. She turned warily. A girl was staring at her with a strange expression. It was terror, shock, and disbelief all at once, as if she had been betrayed. The sun glinted in her eyes and made them look golden, but she turned her head and faded back into the crowd when she saw Anna watching her.
    Anna blinked, and turned around again. She looked up at the sky: gray, as usual. People were pushing rudely past her as she stood motionless, so she started walking again.
    Her marble bumped against her chest. She touched it lightly to steady it. It wasn’t exactly round; there were smoother spaces where her fingers fitted. She wasn’t sure if they had been there all along, or if she had worn them herself in all the years she had owned the marble.
    Handling a marble couldn’t change it from translucent to opaque, could it? No, of course not. The marble had been opaque all along, but she had pretended that she could see worlds in it because that made it more interesting. Of course.
    She had tried looking in childhood pictures to reassure herself, but in every one of them the camera’s flash had caught the marble and made it look like she had a flashlight around her neck. It was surprising that something so dull could shine so brightly. But handling could take off shine, couldn’t it? Varnish? Surely that’s what had happened. It might take a long time, but Anna had held the marble practically every waking moment until she got up to high school. And it was only in college that she had started wearing it under other things. It was at about that point that the varnish must have been worn off all the way. She’d stopped looking into it for imaginary things. She’d stopped imagining the world within it, populated almost entirely by things that didn’t really exi—
    Someone tapped her on the shoulder. Anna looked back. It was the girl who had been staring at her. Close up, she looked very strange. Her skin was unnaturally pale, and her hair was even lighter than the Scandinavian white-blonde that Anna sometimes saw. The girl’s eyes were fixed on the street.
    “M’lady,” she said hesitantly, with a voice that shook, “Are you the keeper of the Orb of Fantasy?” Her accent was indisputably English, but it had an edge that Anna had not heard before.
    Anna looked at her skeptically. “The what?”
    “The Orb of Fantasy.” The girl’s voice sounded shocked. “It populates our world with what you imagine to be there.”
    “No, I don’t have it,” said Anna, and went to walk away. It sounded like something from a video game, or one of the books she no longer read. But the girl reached desperately for her arm, crying out, “But you do! I see it! Why have you neglected us so? Why have you shirked your duty?”
    Anna backed away. “I haven’t got any duty to you. I don’t even know you. Now go away and leave me alone.” She had forgotten how crazy some of the people were who roamed these streets.
    The girl shook her head in amazement. She pointed at Anna’s marble. “Why do you not imagine for us? You used to do it so wonderfully!”
    Anna grasped the marble between the thumb and forefinger of her right hand. “Is this one of those annoy-the-tourists-until-they-pay-you ploys? Because I’m not giving you any money.”
    “I don’t want money!” The girl shrieked. “I want belief!” She looked up at Anna pleadingly. Her eyes were bright gold. Anna drew in her breath. Her eyes flew to the girl’s ears, which her hair only partly covered. They were long and pointed.
    Anna stared. The girl was the embodiment of the elf children that she had imagined when she was young.
    But then she shook her head. For years, ever since the marble dimmed, Anna had forced herself to abandon such childhood fantasies as elves. “You’re an actor, aren’t you?” she asked with an effort. “Nice costume. It nearly fooled me. But of course there’s no such thing as elves.”
    The girl’s golden eyes opened wider. “But there are!” she protested.
    Anna shook her head. She was surer of herself now, raising her voice to drown out her tiny lingering doubt. “No. How gullible do you think I am? There are no elves, no dragons, no fairies—”
    “No! No, don’t say that!” There were tears glimmering in the girl’s frantic eyes. “The magic—”
    Anna was losing her patience. “There is no such thing as magic!” she screamed, looking straight at the girl’s golden eyes.
    As she shouted, she heard a crack. The marble in her hand had split. Startled, she dropped the fragments to the street. They tumbled slowly, the light making them look black. And hollow, like an empty eggshell.
    Anna paused a moment. But then she turned and walked briskly away. She didn’t need that silly marble. Credulous of her to put so much faith and belief into it. She was better off without it. But how that child had carried on!
    The woman walked off down the street. Behind her, the golden-eyed girl knelt, sobbing uncontrollably. She was hopelessly trying to gather the marble’s blackened fragments, as if it was her world that Anna had shattered and not some worthless child’s ornament.
    And then she herself faded, leaving behind only a few tearstains on the cobblestones and an insignificant mound of blackened, crumbled glass.