After dinner the following evening, Mary Kettle spread a scratchy old blanket across a patch of earth that had managed to dry beneath the feeble sun.

“It’s time you know the whole story,” she said, looking directly at Kara. “No more secrets.”

Mary untied her sack and poured out the contents.

Toys in various degrees of disrepair cascaded to the ground: rose-colored marbles, a splintered wooden canoe, two tattered paper kites, a stuffed bear missing one eye, some kind of musical instrument with five airholes, a handheld rocking horse whose paint was chipping off, and numerous dolls of every description.

“Look at all this stuff!” Taff exclaimed, his face flushed with excitement. He picked up a wooden top with stars carefully stenciled along the ridge, but Mary snatched it away.

“Don’t touch,” she said. “Their magic might be weak, but many of these toys are still dangerous.”

“What’s this one do?” Taff asked, gesturing toward the top.

“It spins,” Mary said, “until entire constellations of stars seem to pass before your eyes. You can’t help but look. And as you look, you forget. Today. Yesterday. Where you’ve been. Who you are.”

Silence descended over the group. The campfire crackled.

“I don’t want to play with the top anymore,” Taff said.

Mary was old that night, but as she shared the contents of the sack, her ancient eyes became as playful as a child’s. Some toys still retained their magical properties—though Mary could not always count on them working properly—while others had lost their enchantment altogether. Eventually, Mary stopped discussing magic and focused instead on examples of craftsmanship in which she took particular pride: a ship with sails that unfurled by touching a tiny lever, a wooden puzzle completed only by shifting colored squares into a particular pattern.

“You must have been an extraordinary toymaker,” Kara said.

“Aye,” said Mary, her eyes distant. “Men and women would travel for days just to come to my shop. It was my life’s work. Before I found the grimoire, that is.”

“What are these things?” Taff asked. He held a small metal object between his fingers. “There’s a bunch of them.”

“It’s a gear,” Mary said. She leaned forward, her spine popping with age. “Do you know what a clock is?”

Taff stared at her blankly but Kara remembered something Lucas had once told her. “It tells you what part of the day it is—if you can’t read the sun and stars, I suppose. Some kind of meaningless entertainment for those with too many seeds to spend.”

Mary said, “Someone very special gave me a clock once—another story for another night—and I used the grimoire to enchant it. This was one of my most clever spells, actually. When I turned back the hour hand before I went to bed, I would wake up years younger, and when I turned the hour hand forward, I returned to my natural age—even older, if I so desired, though I certainly did not. You must understand, I had only just discovered my abilities when I saw the first hint of gray in my hair, and the thought of growing old when I had only begun to live . . .”

“After you stopped using magic,” Taff said, “the power of the toys began to fade. But the clock broke altogether, didn’t it? You can’t control it at all.”

Mary nodded. “The grimoire’s ultimate punishment.”

“Where is your grimoire, anyway?” Kara asked.

“Far away from here,” Mary said. “Where I will not be tempted to use it.”

Mary turned her head, but Kara caught the look of longing that flashed through her eyes.

There’s a part of her that misses it still.

“I found another one!” Taff exclaimed, pinching a second gear between his fingers. “Help me find the rest.”

Noting Mary’s confused expression, Kara said, “My brother has a talent for fixing things.”

“Hmm,” said Mary. “Perhaps that’s why my little rabbit listened to you. It sensed your gift. Magic wants to be used—that’s the one rule that never changes, no matter what type of magic we’re talking about—so it makes sense that my toys would be drawn to a talented craftsperson. They think you can make them whole again.”

Taff did not respond. He was lost in the work of separating the mound into smaller piles, categorizing its contents into groups that made sense only to him. Kara had seen him fall into these reveries many times before when working on a project back home.

“Taff,” Mary said, touching his shoulder.

He looked up.

“I appreciate that you want to help me. But you must be trained from birth to build a clock—it is a most complex trade, passed down from father to son. This little gear is one of dozens hidden within the pile, and there are hundreds of other parts as well. It is a job for a master clockmaker.”

“So you’re telling me it’s impossible.”

“Yes.”

Taff grinned. “Fantastic!” He continued searching for clocklike pieces with even greater enthusiasm. “That makes it even more fun. Besides, you’ve done so much for us—I want to do something for you for a change.”

Mary Kettle watched Taff for a few moments, her startled expression gradually giving way to a bewildered smile. Absentmindedly she touched a hand to her eyes and seemed shocked to find a teardrop there. She flicked it away with two fingers, her smile suddenly shifting into a scowl.

“What’s wrong?” Kara asked.

The old woman turned her back to the children and, hunched over, began sweeping the pieces back into the sack. “I shouldn’t have showed you all this,” she snapped, plucking the clock gears from Taff’s hands. “And I certainly do not want you trying to put this back together. Stay away from my things. Do you even know how these objects got their power? Do you?”

Taff shook his head, unable to meet Mary’s eyes. “You’ve been so nice to us. I’d forgotten.”

“Well, that must be wonderful,” said Mary. “That must be just fine. But as for me, I can never forget.”

“Mary,” Kara said, but the old woman ignored her, all her attention focused on Taff.

“Such magic requires ingredients. You understand what I’m saying to you, boy?”

“You used children,” muttered Taff. “I’ve heard the stories.” He blinked away his tears and met her eyes. “But the grimoire was controlling you, like with Kara. It wasn’t your fault.”

Mary’s gray eyes glinted in the firelight. She no longer looked like the woman Kara had begun to consider a friend. She looked like a woman who might linger in shadows or beneath the beds of unwary children.

“I lured them to my cottage with promises of sweetcakes and silver coins and then I boiled them in my kettle until their souls had leeched into whatever object I felt like enchanting that day.”

Kara wrapped her arm around Taff’s shoulders.

“Please,” Kara said. “No more.”

But Mary was not finished. As she spoke, her upper lip lifted in a feral sneer.

“It was like boiling a chicken for broth. You know what happens then, right? The flavor gets sucked away and all you’re left with is a bunch of useless meat. Except I didn’t just throw the meat away or feed it to my livestock. I sent what was left of those children home to their mommies and daddies. Even though their souls were gone and they were nothing but lifeless husks, I sent them home anyway because it amused me.”

She clasped Taff’s face between her hands.

“Now tell me again, boy. Tell me that it was all the grimoire’s fault.”

“Stop it!” Kara exclaimed, pushing Mary away. “You’re scaring him!”

Mary grunted deep in her throat and crossed to her side of the encampment, dragging her bag of broken magic behind her.

Taff, drawing in huge mouthfuls of air, trembled.

“Come on,” said Kara, holding him tight. “You need to sleep.”

But Taff broke free of her embrace and shouted, “You’re not like that anymore! I know you! The real you! You helped us! You’re good! The witch who did all those terrible things is gone forever!”

There was a long silence. And then, from deep within the shadows, came a hoarse response: “Are you so sure?”