“It’s irony, isn’t it?” said the giant. “I can tell, I have a great sense for irony.”

After overhearing a scullery boy make the joke that, since the baron had lost a wife and gained an infant, he had effectively shed the house of 130 pounds of woman-flesh, he beat the boy senseless. No one blamed him.

A year later he had switched from that box to a new one. The old one had gotten weak around edges, the corners were starting to fray. The new box was smaller, and this time Kyle stenciled fewer designs on the sides. All of God’s shaking and rattling hadn’t broken through the last one; over time, God’s protests had quieted some.

The third box was even smaller, and the fourth was smaller again. The fifth, and current, box, a small shoe box, had no markings on it at all. It still trembled, once every hour or two, and if you put your head close enough to it you could still make out muffled screams, but Kyle had gotten surprisingly good at ignoring it.