It was quite the oddest place Carmen had ever been to, and even more weirdly, everyone she passed had their heads down, most clad in pompom hats, and wore parkas similar to Sofia’s (which Carmen, shivering in her leather jacket, now regretted passing up), and didn’t even seem to notice that half of their main shopping street had been ripped away and replaced with a fairy tale.

She found the steps behind what appeared to be a huge Greek temple—Well, of course, she thought—and, panting and realizing how unfit she was, reached the top, opposite a pitch-black version of Dracula’s castle. There were yet more steps ahead.

“You are kidding,” said Carmen, almost out loud, and frowning at Google Maps.

Sure enough, the map directed her to a narrow set of steps that spiraled up and vanished up into the gloom. She looked back and surveyed the city now spread out at her feet, the gardens neat, the streets heading back to the water in perfect rows, an occasional honk from the trains below, the endless drone of the bagpipes played all day for the tourists, and the faint dinging of the trams, going nowhere. What a strange place this was.

Carmen sniffed and marched on up through the dark tunnel of something absurdly called “New College” and found, to her surprise, that it popped her out at the top of the Royal Mile.

The ancient thoroughfare that ran between the castle and all the way down to Holyrood Palace was full of shops selling anything and everything that could get some tartany nonsense stamped on it, but it was early in the morning and the tourists were not yet abroad.

Anyway, Carmen didn’t notice the eye-level shops straightaway. As she emerged from the dark tunnel of the ancient steps, she could see only a three-sided courtyard and a towering structure with windows that seemed to funnel upward.

How could they have built so high without lifts or modern technology? There was no car noise here, no trains, not even a bagpipe, just quiet footsteps passing by. And as she walked through the courtyard and stepped out onto the cobbles, polished beneath her feet, Carmen had the slightest sense of a spell, of a suspension in time. She wondered who else had stepped on them in their time: kings and queens, the poor and forgotten, uncounted for hundreds of years. She herself could be anyone—a dairy maid, a farmer’s girl, a grand lady—stepping out into an unchanging Edinburgh world.

A lonely shaft of sunlight appeared and lit up an old black-and-white building next door to the narrow passageway she had emerged from, and she watched it shine on the ancient panes of glass, so neatly and tidily divided, six on the bottom, six on the top.