"Say for example you’re a soldier walking home from the war. Or the maiden working in your stepmother’s garden. Or the miller with a cart and a broken axel. A wild-haired woman will stop and, in her kindness, give you a gift of great power and significance. A jewelry box, for example, that can summon three dogs of great, greater, and greatest size. Or a letter from that old love you try never to think of. Maybe a bag that can hold everything up to you, including death itself. And now your ordinary life of meandering pleasures is jacked up with purpose and an unwieldy power that may be a help to you but may also rear its head back and bite a curse on your nose. I want to give you such an invention, even if you are not a soldier or a miller, and all I have done is leave you unexpectedly teary in the break room while waiting for the microwave to ding." — The Inventions of Witches, Kathryn Nuernberger