Because it is Tuesday, Annalise is an elf. By centuries and sorrows she transforms herself; grows capricious, dangerous and other.

She does laundry. Afterwards, the coin slots are found stuffed full of dead leaves and grit. “Bunch of savages in this town,” the closing clerk mutters.

She steals a broom and flits from house to house, pinching the toes of sleeping babes. They wail, they cry, they keep their parents up at night.

She bends metal to her will; cold steel and moonlight twist the lunatic hair of the aerials after her. A dozen dozen fathers thump teevees, curse the luck that breaks through Bonanza.

She sours milk, repairs shoes, scatters ill-luck and money, rings doorbells and runs away, paper burning behind her. “You damn kids,” sober citizens mutter, and scrape fouled soles on doorsills.

Come Wednesday and she is Puritan, dour and humorless. “There’s that Annalise,” the girls whisper behind her back. “Butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth.”