“How much of the magic on the streets is crude magic, and how much is refined?” Kamboja asks. “Can you tell?”

Taraana purses his lips and Paheli glances at him. He looks down at her and smiles before replying. “A little more of the crude compared to the refined.”

We ponder over this as we make our way through the streets. It takes us forty minutes to get to Balat; we manage public transport quite well without being visible to humans. Like us, Taraana can choose his visibility at will. The day is a fair one, and a clock somewhere chimes three in the afternoon when we get off the bus.

Balat is a series of narrow streets and alleys with tall and equally narrow pastel-colored houses on either side. The houses are rather dilapidated and could do with some maintenance and a new coat of paint. But the air is filled with light and the shouts of children playing; a bright blue sky stretches overhead, and the waters of the Bosphorus Strait glimmer in the distance. Laundry flutters from clotheslines strung high up from the third or fourth floors. To complete the picture, every house has at least two window boxes from which flowers and other greenery spill gleefully over.

We follow the magic to a narrow, three-storied building located halfway up an incline. The house is pale yellow with white trim; a rainbow of roses blooms in a garden box in the lower window. A flight of stairs is located immediately outside the second door, which is the one we need. The house looks nothing like a shop from the outside; the door is closed and covered with a metal bar, which, despite the roses, adds a forbidding demeanor to the place. We know better than to be intimidated, though.

Paheli simply turns the knob and the door opens inward. We enter the store and take a much-needed moment to orient ourselves. Clocks cover every surface of the establishment; modern clocks with asymmetric shapes, vintage ones with yellow faces, Gothic cuckoo clocks made of black metal, and Turkish clocks with tile faces featuring the most beautiful Arabic calligraphy. They are all ticking, and the din is incredible. We have been here, so we knew what to expect, but Taraana’s jaw drops open and his eyes go round. The proprietor is black-haired with turquoise eyes ringed by gold eyelashes; she is sitting at the counter, working on yet another clock. She has a weathered, stern but not unkind face. She looks up briefly when we enter.

“We have a bag full of Between diamonds.” Areum throws the first volley. “Are you interested?”

“As if you need to ask,” the middle-worlder woman replies dryly. Her name is Miray. Though her manner is brusque, she is not unfriendly. Or at least, she hasn’t been hostile to us before. Things can change. They have before.