It was three days before the monster woman noticed that the vase was missing. Mula was prepared. She had thought up a perfect lie and had practiced it and practiced it.

“Where’s my vase?” the monster woman said. “It used to be right there. Right there.”

“I traded it for ale, my lady,” Mula said. “A few days ago. Remember?” The girl waited, trying her best to look innocent. She was terrible at lying. It put a funny feeling in her belly and a flush on her cheeks.

“Oh . . . yes, I suppose I . . .” The monster woman shrugged. She ate some wheat mash, washed it down with some ale, and passed out on her cot.

Mula stood over her a long moment. The monster woman looked so vulnerable. With her face slack, her lips parted, her hand clutching her blanket, she looked . . . soft, almost sweet. As though kindness could have lived inside her.

The girl remembered her mother’s skinning knife, the way it had slid into the sorcerer’s body like he was nothing, the way it had scraped against his bones.

The next morning, while Mula was chopping a turnip to make a thin stew base, she held the knife up so that it caught firelight from the hearth. She twisted it this way and that, watching the play of light, wondering if she could do it again. Stab someone. Stab them so bad they died.

Her lower lip started to tremble. If she did it, she’d be hateful for true, deserving of all the nasty looks she got.

After setting the stew to simmer, she put the knife back on the mantel and refused to think about it again.

Three weeks later, her hidden vase was full, and her ankle was healed well enough that she could walk long distances. Tonight, she told herself. Tonight, when the monster woman was asleep, she would sneak out of the cottage and flee into the forest. It was a good night for it. Winter was losing its frozen grip on the village. Meltwater tinkled as it dripped from the roof. The earth smelled rich and loamy. Birds were beginning to sing again. This time, she wouldn’t be so cold.

Besides, Mula was smarter now, a more grown-up girl than the last time she’d fled. Instead of running aimlessly, she would go west, to the place where sand stretched across the world like a sea, where the weather was warm and no sorcerers lived.

Mula rehearsed it all in her mind. She would wait for the woman to start snoring. She would quietly slip on her shoes, don her mother’s now-hoodless cloak, grab the knife from the mantel, and slip out the door. She would sneak to the outhouse and unbury her glass vase full of food scraps. Then she would tiptoe westward, away from the village and into the woods. She’d walk as long and far as her sore ankle would allow. By the time the monster woman woke and discovered her missing, she’d be too far away to find.