“I am sure that is so,” her granddaughter said, handing the baby to her grandmother without hesitation.

The grandmother went outside. As she carried the boy toward the hole she’d dug, he reached up both hands to touch her chin and looked up into her eyes.

“No,” the grandmother said. “No.”

She dropped the child into the hole and began to shove the earth over him. When the hole was filled and she had stomped the soil down hard, she pushed a great mound of snow over it, leaving no trace of what she had done.

“The earth will surely hold him,” she said, wiping off her hands.

But when she went back into the lodge, the first thing she saw was that evil child, once again cooing in his mother’s arms.

That night the grandmother did not sleep. What could she do now? Clearly the baby’s evil magic was strong. But she could not give up. There had to be a way. Then it came to her. There was an answer. Evil could not survive against the cleansing flames of fire.

The next day she made a fire some distance from their lodge. She piled on dry branches and then logs. Before long it was burning so hot, she had to step back from it.

She went back into the lodge, her forehead beaded with sweat from the fire’s heat.

“Give me the baby,” she said.

Without a word, her face calm, her granddaughter did as her grandmother asked.

As the grandmother carried the infant, he kept smiling up at her. The boy was still smiling as she lifted him and hurled him into the heart of the raging fire. Then she piled on even more wood. She stayed there watching until the fire had burned itself out and there was nothing left but ashes.

“Now,” she said, “now his evil is certainly gone from the world.”

But when she returned to their lodge, just as had happened each time before, she heard the happy sound of the infant’s laughter before she even pulled back the skin door.

That night, once again she could not sleep. She sat on her sleeping rack, unsure what to do next. Then, in the midst of the night, she heard someone scratch on the door of the lodge. She looked up and saw the shadowy shape of a tall man standing before her.

A man’s deep voice spoke, a voice that she heard more in her heart than in her ears.