The witch comes, and she takes his baby from him. He watches her as she holds it in her arms, his hands clenching and unclenching in impotent rage, knowing that he is both a coward and a thief, with baby-seller about to be added to his collection of sorry titles. Why his baby? Why couldn't it have been someone else's? He needs a drink. He wishes the witch would hurry up and leave, so he can collapse, alone in the silence, and cry his eyes out. As he thinks he hates himself for feeling such things. Sinner. Coward. He berates himself, silently, his thought like whips to scourge his soul. It is not enough to stem the flow of dark desires that well up, unbidden, to taint and sour whatever his mind turns to. He wants the witch, her aims accomplished, to go away from this town, from his life, to never return; he wishes that the witch would take his baby and be done with him. When she leaves, he tells himself, he will go into her garden, that hellish Eden, and he will burn every inch of it until all taint of her presence disappears into purifying flame. When she leaves, he thinks. He will tell his wife- now sleeping the sleep of the witch's foul brew- that the babe she bore wasn't a babe at all. He will tell her that she failed to carry his child to term, and guilt will still her tongue, stop her mind from wandering any further. The drink will stop his, he knows. His gaze falls again upon his newborn daughter, and his heart ties itself into a painful knot. It- she- is ugly and shrivelled, with raw, red, skin, but skin that was warm and impossibly soft to the touch as he held her, just a few moments ago. She is his flesh, his blood, his immortal soul, and he is selling it to the devil. Souls are always the most precious to those who no longer have possession of their own. The sound that escapes from his throat is soft and strangled. The witch pauses, turns, and smiles. One hand reaches out to stroke the baby's cheek, smooth white skin against red, like snow on blood, eternal death on newborn life. "Yes?" She says, her voice slow and languorous. Her teeth are like a beast's, long and sharp and almost imperceptibly curved. The man swallows. His eyes flicker down, and he keeps his silence. He can say nothing. He sold his voice with his soul.