It was only months after she'd moved to the cabin, months of teeth cracking on stone, that she thought the witch may have meant her harm. Not a conspiracy between women, one free thanks to age, the other free thanks to cunning and constitution, but a punishment intended to ruin her. And yet Sapo kept at it, kept eating the mountain, stone by stone by stone, because she feared that if she didn't, it would come, and she didn't want it.

She kept her head up until she'd exited the shop. Then she staggered sideways into the wall outside. The pair of marbles glinted in the palm of her good hand. She was a little stunned to be holding her prize at all; she stared at them as if somewhere in their milky depths the secrets of the universe might reside. Perhaps it was merely the dizzying pain, but she felt almost as if they stared back.