Spite reappeared with a heavy earthenware jug. She came up to them, and a moment before reaching them she took the jug’s handle in both hands and swung it against Malice’s head.

Clay and bone shattered, spilling wine and blood out over Malice’s body and the floor, and both sisters. Where the liquids splashed against the oven door there was savage hissing, and then smoke. Spite dropped the handle. ‘Help me lift her!’

Envy took up a wrist and an ankle.

One side of Malice’s head was flattened, although mostly near the top. Her ear was pushed in, surrounded by torn skin and cracked bones that made a pattern like the petals of a flower around that bloodied ear. The eye on that side stared up at the ceiling, leaking bloody tears. She made a moaning sound as she was lifted from the floor, but the other eye looked directly at Envy.

‘Wait!’ snapped Spite, setting Malice’s foot down and reaching for the oven handle. She cursed as she pulled down the door and Envy smelled scorched flesh. ‘That smarts,’ she said, gasping as she retrieved Malice’s right ankle. ‘Turn her round – head first into the oven.’

Envy could not pull her gaze from Malice’s lone, staring eye. ‘She’ll kick.’

‘So what. We can break the legs if we have to.’

Together, with Malice between them, they forced their sister into the oven, and this effort at last swept from Envy that terrible staring eye. The inside of the oven was lined with clay, and loud sizzling sounds accompanied every touch of skin, blood and hair against the rounded sides. Malice struggled, pulling at her arms, but the effort was weak. They got the upper half of their sister’s body into the oven and began pushing the rest in. The legs did not kick. They were limp and heavy, the toes curling upward.

‘No more bread in this one,’ gasped Spite as she folded the leg she held and pushed it past the edge of the door, the knee leaving a patch of skin on the metal rim.

‘They’ll have to smash it into pieces and build another,’ said Envy. She got the leg in on her side as well.

Spite grasped the door’s handle and slammed it home.

‘Feed more wood,’ said Envy, sitting back. ‘I want her crisp. She stank like the Abyss!’

‘I wonder what we did wrong.’

‘Don’t know, but it tells us one thing.’

‘What?’

‘You and me, Spite. We should never try to kill each other. If one of us did, well, I think it’s dead for keeps.’

Spite studied her for a long moment, and then went off to gather an armload of wood. ‘She won’t come back from this one, will she?’

‘No. Of course not.’

‘Because,’ continued Spite, ‘if she did, we’d be in real trouble.’

‘Throw some wood into the oven itself, and that kindling there.’

‘No. I don’t want to open that door again, Envy. In case she jumps out.’