She set down her mortar. “Careful. That is another wish.”
“The sphere is old,” she said softly. “Older than the mountains. It gives wishes, yes. But it gives them the way a river gives water—it takes its price from the banks. The sculpture you have? That woman was a sculptor too, three hundred years ago. She wished for eternal beauty in her art. Now she is the art. And she will never stop screaming.”
“I wish I had never found you.”
