Near Glasgow, when the mist swirls down the Clyde and wells up between the high north bank and the low south bank, there's a place up in the rocks where the sun shines through the mist and the air is gray with a million colors. Robert MacFarland walked down the narrow, cobblestone paved lane from his home, headed toward that place.

The cold moist air made a stark contrast to the snug warmth of his father's cottage. As he breathed its fresh tang the heady aroma of his mother's mutton stew simmering over a peat fire in the hearth, mingled with the sweet smoke from his father's old briar, faded from his nostrils. The steady drip of collecting drizzle from the eaves of other cottages along the lane, and the splosh of his brogans in the little puddles that collected among the cobbles, washed the sound of his now married sister's lively chatter from his ears, leaving him to find that place of peace inside himself that he had always cherished.

Six years earlier, a young lad named Bobbie MacFarland had gone to sea, a cabin boy aboard a freighter sailing down the Clyde out of Glasgow. Now Robert MacFarland was home from the sea, a boy no longer, expected now to take up his father's trade in the shipbuilding firm of Dunhill and Dunhill down in Glasgow. But the belief there ought to be some magic in life that had made the boy go to sea was not yet dead in the man who had returned. After the initial rush of emotion at rejoining his family had subsided, Robert had begun to feel again the stifling changelessness of their existence. He could feel the longing that had brought him home turning again into the longing that had made him leave.

"Joanne," he had asked his sister, "Do you recall our friend Laenie, the one who used to play with us in Mother's garden? Have you seen anything of her these past years?"

She had looked at him rather blankly for a moment, then said, "It's been long since then, Robert. I really can't say I remember those times very well. But if it's Elaine Campbell you're thinking of, she may have asked after you a time or two." The suggestive glance she gave her husband Bruce made Robert know she did not recall at all those pleasant hours that had turned their mother's vegetable garden into a fairyland for them. Robert withdrew into his own memories, bringing back the fruity fragrance of the grape arbor that had shaded them, the big green leaves all around, and the bright gray eyes of the quick, slender playmate they had called Laenie, who had visited them there and shared their childish adventures.

Now as he walked down the cobbled lane Robert was retracing steps his younger self had taken many times, down past the last cottage to where the lane ended because the hill was finally too steep and rocky for anything but some scrubby brush and a few stray goats. As Robert scrambled down the high rocky bank, pausing now and again to gauge his distance from the mist- shrouded Clyde below and recall the next turn on his way, he remembered the first time he had seen her.

He had been sitting in that special place he'd found, where the rocks dipped back in to form a rough alcove, almost a cave, and he could look out and down at the lower bank, and watch the mist swirl along the Clyde. As he watched that time the mist had thickened, but the sun was bright behind it so that it became more a scintillation of tiny fractured rainbows than a fog. It was then that she had first stepped out of the mist, a thin wraith of a girl with pale pale hair cropped above her shoulders, and large gray eyes that twinkled and shone with the same brilliance as the sunlight through the mist.

"Hello," she said,

"Hello yourself," he said, in the manner of boys with girls who intrude on their private affairs.

"May I sit here too?" she asked.

"I suppose so," Bobbie said, a little grudgingly. But something in the easy way she moved on the rocks, the open smile on her elfin face, warmed him to her a bit, so he said, "Do you like this place too?"

"Yes. Beautiful, isn't it, the way the fog dances with colors? Like the unformed essence of a bright dream, waiting for you to shape it with your hopes and wishes."

She had put words to his own feelings about the place, and that kindled a new joy in his heart, to know there was someone he might share those feelings with. So he said, with an edge of fresh hope in his voice, "Do you come here often?"

"I live here," she said.

She was part of the magic of that place, Bobbie knew. After that she was there almost every time he came. Together they dreamed adventures, Bobbie of voyages across the sea to enchanted lands of untold dangers that a brave and resourceful lad could overcome, Laenie of the wonders to be seen along the way, fragrant and colorful flowers, brilliantly plumaged birds, wondrous creatures of every kind, and of the miraculous pleasures to be enjoyed when the brave deeds were done.

After Bobbie had coaxed Laenie to visit his mother's lush little garden, Joanne joined them and would ooh and aah at their imaginings, and ask the practical questions about where they might find food and shelter on the way to their adventures, or how they would keep from getting lost so they could find their way home again. But it was the magical quality Laenie brought with her that made those times memorable for Robert.

Now he made the last little scramble around a protrusion of the cliff face, and found the place again. It was smaller and more dank and barren than his remembrance of it, but he crouched down and crawled inside nonetheless.

As he sat in the shelter of his little cave and looked out at the sparkling mist that hung there, Robert's eyes defocused and his mind began to project the old images into the swirling gray clouds; fairy castles, enchanted forests, ancient sailing vessels, all the things of myth and legend that he had brought here in his boyhood.

And Laenie came at last, the same large gray eyes, the same pale hair cut short above her slender shoulders, the same simple homespun smock she'd always worn.

"I hoped you'd come," he said. "You knew I'd come," she answered.

"I couldn't be sure," he said.

"Deep down you were sure. That's why I came. It's time for you to know that."

"Laenie, I've grown up."

"I know."

"You didn't though. You're still a little girl!"

"What did you expect?"

"I guess I didn't know what to expect. I pictured you just as you always were."

"That's why I'm the same."

"I don't understand."

"Yes you do. You always did, in a way. It was good for us both to let you forget for a while, but now you've got to remember again."

"Remember what, Laenie?"

"That your kind and my kind are different. That you brought me here with your mind. That I have been what you wanted me to be, as my kind have always been what your kind wanted us to be."

"You're real, Laenie. I'm not imagining you here."

"Oh yes, I'm real. More real than you can know. But my reality is not the same as yours."

"But Laenie, when we're together, those have always been the best times of my life!"

"And of mine. What we can share, what we can have together, is at once more real and less real than anything either of us can have alone. More real for its intensity, less real because it lacks endurance."

"Oh Laenie, that's what's wrong with the world outside! About all it can do is endure, and that poorly. People and things just plod along, slowly aging. There's none of the adventure that we used to dream of!"

"I know. Because of that the links between your kind and mine are fading. There are not many like you who can still bring us back, not many we can share our dreams with. Some of my kind fear the link may be lost forever. Some think that may be for the best, that we should go our own ways at last. But there are still some who hope to bring back what we had, who believe that together we can shape a much better world than we could ever achieve separately. I'm one of those, and you are part of our hope, Robert. You can help to revive the dreams."

"Laenie, Laenie, if only I could leave this world, go with you to yours! Then we could dream together again forever!"

"Oh, Bobbie, there's much that you can't be made to understand. Our differences are as real as we are. You can never belong in my world, no more than I can belong in yours. We need you here in your world, to help revive the dreamers. We can make your dreams live, as we always have, but new dreams are needed. Find those new dreams for us, Robert. Give us something to share with you again!"

Robert could not speak. He was overcome with a deep sense that he was about to lose the most important part of himself. He reached out to Laenie and took her little hands in his now large and calloused ones. He looked deeply into her big gray eyes with his moist ones, and drew from her the strength of her resolve.

That resolve found its place within him, and began to grow. It took Robert deep within himself so that he did not know when Laenie left him, but when he came out of himself again and looked once more at the sparkling mist outside the cave, she was gone.

Robert MacFarland left his little cave then. He went back to his father's house, but not to his father's trade. He did many things in his lifetime, and dreamed many dreams. Over the years his Laenie came back to him in many forms. But most importantly Robert MacFarland gathered others to his dreams, and inspired other dreamers to believe that their grandest dreams could be made real as well. We who help to carry those dreams forward will remember him for that.