When the girl was young she would practice spells, she would recite things she made up, verses of nonsense and babble born from the foam that would slather the edges of her mouth when imagining words, all this done to cure her mother’s sadness, her morass and pall. Her mother’s shadow had a shadow, the girl could see it, the various shapes it assumed, how it would sometimes rise up from the ground as if on stilts, while other times it would shrink itself into a compacted ball, a quivering knot that raced across the earth like a dark warbling platelet, a watery disc. Her mother’s shadow’s shadow was a shapeshifter, tints of deceit clinging to its aura. None of the spells the girl came up with worked. No matter what she said, what she wrote, what she sang, what she chanted, what she cast forth, the universe and its many hosts and species remained indifferent to her sincerest efforts.