The set of balls that I had given to my niece as a birthday present were received with appropriate delight, but not for long. An hour later, almost to the second, she returned to my side, with a light hand on my sleeve and heavy eyes as if she had spent the whole of the time sobbing. 'They don't work,' she reported sheepishly, perhaps fearing that she had not quite fathomed their essence, or suddenly suspecting that there were instructions on the base of the luxury silk covered presentation case that she had neither read nor noticed. Confused by the statement, and pushing out my bottom lip, I said: 'What do you mean they don't work? They are balls. You put them on a flat surface and roll them, or, if the surface is at an angle, they will roll unaided. Did you try either of these? Did you even take them out of their luxury silk covered presentation case?' I felt a certain responsibility towards the inattentive child and tried to be as fastidious as possible when it came to pointing out details otherwise completely lost on her. 'Of course I did. I tried everything. But when you take them out, they won't budge. They just stay where they are.' She had a slight wrinkle on her brow. I removed her little paper-napkin hand from my sleeve and used the rough pad of my bold and fleshy thumb to smooth out that unmaidenly wrinkle. Nonsense, I thought. 'Nonsense!' I said. 'Bring them to me. I will show you how to roll a ball.' I said this in a sugary tone that contained a whiff of condescending overtones. I was not meaning to belittle my niece's limitations, or rather, to magnify them, but my incredulity was sadly reaching its bank. She returned, handed me the balls, and let out a long sigh that I chose to ignore. To my avuncular surprise, and to the foddering glee of my niece, the balls would not work. Once they left your hand they just froze wherever they were. Throw them in the air and they stayed where your hand had last made contact. When you touched it again it acted like a normal object, a ball with weight, density, texture, etc; unassuming except for a peculiar and insistent charm, as if they were continually making eyes at you. I inspected the surface of each ball for irregularities, imperfections, blemishes: none. I tried other experiments: I tested them against a magnet; I brought them close to the television to see if the image warped, I held them against the window and then from the other side tried to move them with my finger pressing to the glass at their frozen locus; I tried dropping them from various heights; I gave them to the dog to play with. Nothing would give. Their secret remained hidden on their delectable surfaces, reflecting with crisp perfection the world that wound itself around these darling balls with languor. I wrote a stern letter of complaint to the manufacturers, relishing in long descriptive passages concerning the dire distress that the malfunctioning balls had caused my niece, indicating possible long term effects on the child's ability to trust in our most commonly held assumptions about causality, and elaborating on what this, if exposed, might mean for their most reputable company. A week later a replacement arrived including a letter of apology hand written by the director, with a full refund. The 'unfortunate' balls were to be sent for examination and a full investigation carried out so that, I was assured, such a mishap would never occur again. I was thanked for my understanding discretion on the matter and given an ample suggestion of future benefits if I remained steadfast in my loyalty to them. I brought the gift around to my niece, tied with a dusky mauve bow, set in place by command of the toady director no doubt. When she saw the gift in my hand her face broadened into a mischievous smile. I almost retracted the gift because of that smile; she had a truly insipid personality and was completely undisciplined in her responses to the pettiest of circumstances. I blame my sister and my darling brother-in-law who don't seem to know the value of the word 'no'. I gave her the gift none the less and decided to make a quick exit before becoming embroiled in the doldrum of family life, but only after a slow gin. As I got up out of the armchair to leave I saw my niece skipping out of the kitchen and into the garden clapping her hands with every hop accomplished. Her hair was tied up in a ponytail, a fresh spritely ponytail that certainly did not suit her face that was far too round, like a full bladder. As she skipped – though more like stomped – her way to the garden, the door being ajar and the bright lawn sitting in repose, blind to the brash treatment it was soon to receive, I noticed that the ponytail, flapping up and down irresponsibly, was tied up with the very bow that had adorned the replacement luxury silk covered presentation case. So thats why her eyes had almost bulged out of their soggy caverns. I had to give her credit for that: she certainly displayed a twinge of imagination when choosing the ribbon above the present. But what about the balls? I strode into the garden. 'What about the balls? Do they work? Where are they? I need to know if they work.' She stopped her skipping, shrugged and said 'Oh yes, they work. Thank you Uncle. They were so much fun.' She immediately turned her back on me and continued to skip towards the trickle of mulberry trees that stammered at the end of the garden. Character I insist upon, but impertinence I abhor and this I took for the latter. 'No really, I insist. I have to be on my way now and I really must see that they are in working order.' If I had really wanted to see them then I would have gone into the kitchen where she must have been looking at herself, or more her equine scion, in the pantry mirror. God knows why there is a mirror in the pantry but there is, anyway, whilst I sat in my chair drinking a slow gin (I am an exceptionally quiet drinker and would have certainly heard the sound of rolling) all that I heard, I am quite certain of this now, was a door opening with a cautious creek and a limp recasting of the onerous lines: 'Mirror mirror on the wall,' etc. 'Come on, I haven't got all day,' I said as I turned and started walking inside. When I reached the kitchen and saw the empty replacement luxury silk covered presentation case I turned to my niece who was now approaching the garden door at a snail pace with a slightly flushed and servile continence. 'Well, where are they?' 'They rolled away,' she said, looking from her feet to me and from me to her feet, etc. 'I did not hear you playing with them. Are you sure you did not put them somewhere?' 'They rolled away. I put them on the floor and they rolled away.' 'Well, where are they now? If they rolled away then they must be in here somewhere.' She pointed under the sink. I pulled my trousers up from the the pockets to assist my genuflection and bent to inspection. There were two holes in an air vent that led directly outside. I gave her a vaguely fearsome look and walked to the driveway to investigate further. The two holes were joined by two long tracks through the gravel that curved with the driveway out into the odious gape.