“Stop!” Anya shouted.

She ran barefoot through the frost. The wheel was spinning wildly—ten, twenty, thirty turns. The Factor stood inside, emptying a sack of black peppercorns into the basin. “More,” he whispered to the stone. “Give me more water. I’ll sell it to three villages. I’ll be rich.”

The mill’s shadow was colder than the air around it. Anya stepped over the threshold, and the silence swallowed the sound of cicadas. In the centre of the grinding floor, a shallow basin sat beneath the dormant millstone. She poured the dill seeds in.

The mill was gone. Only the basin remained, half-buried in mud. The dill seeds lay in it, still green, still fragrant.