He had held out a handkerchief brimming with jewels, but she wouldn’t take them.

She told a story of being so fixated on the beautiful features of a playmate that she collided with a tree and skinned her own face.

She was a pixie, a fairy, full of imagination and in another world.

Children read their favorite books to death, she said. They are careless in their devotions. They rip the pages, scribble, and spill things on them. And they are demon book thieves.