Judith Broom had a knick-knack drawer like everybody else. She absentmindedly tossed her keys there too, amid the random screws to lost things, and spent tubes of glue. Love letters got snagged in there, along with stale coupons and inexplicable dust. It was dust like glass and horsehair. Judith Broom rummaged with her bare hands to the very back of her knick-knack drawer, groping for a shape she remembered. She conjured a sphere that fit the palm of her hand, and the Talisman hummed like a newborn sun in her undergarments. She took nothing for granted.

And nothing could harm it.