And this solitary action, which she
repeated several times that day, was all the movement that the woman
could rouse from her.
When evening came, she asked her daughter why she stared into the
coals. Mary answered simply, without emotion. "I am watching the fire
die. Like a human life, no matter how many times it is built up, the
end is always the same. And when the will to feed it is gone, there is
death." With this she turned slowly towards her mother, adding with
grim satisfaction. "Yes. At least there is Death." Then she turned
away again, the faint smile dissolving into the stone coldness of her
face.
The witch spent the whole of that first day, and much of the second,
reading through her books of lore, trying to find some spell or charm
that would cure her daughter's malady. Because to her understanding,
she had been touched by some dark spirit of the Netherworld, or
perhaps possessed in some measure by the Stone itself.
But what ailed the girl was not the work of witchcraft, and there was
nothing in her mother's books or box of talismans that would move or
affect her in the least.
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