Martha’s eyes were brimming with tears. “Of course not.” She quickly wiped her tears away. She was well aware that crying in public was as shameful as wishing to steal something that didn’t belong to you.

“My mother could help you.” To Faith, Martha seemed no different than the women who came to the door at night, leaving their shoes on the porch so they wouldn’t track mud inside, women who wanted something, whose lives had not turned out as they’d imagined they would, who could not sleep or eat, who worried over the fate of a son or a daughter. Faith saw a smudge around the stranger, but she was too much of a child to understand the dark turn desire might take.

“Could she?” Martha felt a chill. She stared at the witch, who was gathering provisions in a basket. She wore her black hair loose and red boots; a black crinoline peeked out from beneath her dress. Who was she to wear black undergarments? Martha was a widow and had worn mourning clothes for the prescribed period, then had once again dressed in a proper gray dress. “And how could she do that?” she asked the child, thinking to herself that the answer was simple. Witchery.

It was then Maria turned and spied Martha. At once she believed that something was not right. She saw the shrewd cunning in this stranger, and the craving that was so heated a hole had burned through the bodice of her dress. There was a puff of smoke in the air that Martha caught in her hand.

“Come here, Faith. Stay by my side,” Maria called. The girl grinned at Martha, then ran dutifully toward her mother. “Did you want something?” Maria asked the stranger.

Martha’s face flushed and her desire shone through her, aflame. She wanted something most desperately. Among the town fathers she was thought to be mild; she had been a good wife who didn’t complain, and was now a widow on her own in the world. But Maria spied a woman who plotted, one who was jealous beyond words. To know another’s mind was evidence of witchery, and Martha began to burn more hotly beneath Maria’s gaze.

“If you want something, speak up,” Maria said.

“I want nothing from you,” Martha replied curtly. She turned on her heel and found her way to the back of the shop, fearing she would be struck dead if she dared to look behind her, for she had told a lie and she knew it.

When Maria and her daughter left, Martha went to the counter to pay for a box of glass jars she needed for her raspberry jelly. The property her husband had left her would soon be claimed by the magistrates, for she hadn’t the means to cover their debt and the land would pay for all they owed. The only thing that would grow there was a thicket of raspberry bushes. All through the summer she made jam and jelly, which she sold door-to-door. But every jar added to her bitterness, and every family she saw inflamed her, until at last her skin burned with a scrim of envy.